Merkel: The true believer

By Lionel Barber, Quentin Peel and Gerrit Wiesmann in Berlin

Published: November 8 2010 20:55 | Last updated: November 8 2010 20:55



This week’s summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in Seoul may be shaping up to be ill tempered, but Angela Merkel seems to be positively looking forward to it.

The German chancellor is not entirely sanguine. She is worried about the revival of trade protectionism, not least in the US Congress, and the looming threat of currency competition turning into a new trade war.

But as she takes charge of pouring tea and coffee for visitors to her office in Berlin, Ms Merkel spells out how she hopes to be a peace-maker in Seoul if any confrontation develops between the US and China about exchange rates and trade imbalances. “I do not think it sensible to have a political argument,” she tells the Financial Times.

Unlike some leaders, Ms Merkel – re-elected last year for a second term as leader of Europe’s biggest economy – says she is a true believer in the value of the G20 grouping. She defends its success since 2008 in preventing the global economic crisis turning into a prolonged depression, and wants to see the disparate group of industrialised and emerging economies put on a more permanent basis.

Where some would argue that the group is too large to be decisive, the chancellor’s advisers say she likes the size, with the number of leaders round the table about the same as a European Union summit in Brussels.

A trip to Seoul gives Ms Merkel a chance, at least briefly, to put the problems of a fractious and unpopular coalition government in Berlin to one side. A high-profile performance on the world stage might help restore her flagging poll ratings at home.

Reviving global growth and defending free trade should also make it easier to handle the financial crisis within the eurozone, where the cost of government borrowing has soared for the weaker economies in the EU’s common currency area. The threat to the cohesion of European economic and monetary union has been the chancellor’s overwhelming concern since the outbreak of the debt crisis in Greece at the start of the year.

But top of her list of priorities for Seoul is to combat any new protectionism and try once more to revive the flagging Doha round of trade liberalisation and development talks within the World Trade Organisation.

As for the problem of global imbalances, pitting the huge trade surpluses of China and Germany against the deep deficit of the US, she is bluntly dismissive of Washington’s proposal that the G20 should set quantified targets to even them up. “Exchange rates should reflect the real economic strength of a country,” she says. “Particularly in view of the debate about China, we need to find facts and benchmarks to calculate what is a fair exchange rate. I don’t think much of quantified balance of payments targets.”

Global imbalances are not just influenced by exchange rates but are also a function of competitiveness, she argues. “The competitiveness of countries depends on many more issues than just weighing up imports against exports.” Simply setting a 4 per cent target for surpluses and deficits as a proportion of gross domestic product is “far too narrowly focused”. It is a more diplomatic way of dismissing a suggestion that senior German government officials reject as “rubbish” with “no scientific or academic basis”.

Part of the concern in Berlin about the US-led debate on global imbalances is that it shoves Germany into the same corner as China, ignoring the fact that Germany cannot manipulate its currency, the euro. “You cannot look at the European Union, with its single internal market, and a common currency in large parts of it, on a country-by-country basis,” the chancellor says. “One should judge Europe as a whole.”

In spite of her confident words, however, Ms Merkel is having to defend her policies, and her country, on several fronts.

Germany is under attack not only from the US for the size of its trade surplus – a matter of great pride to most German manufacturers and economists, let alone politicians. The same trade surplus is criticised within the EU, not least by France, ordinarily Berlin’s closest political ally. Meanwhile, Ms Merkel’s policy of sternly reducing public sector borrowing and outstanding debt, even while global economic recovery remains tentative, is under fire on both sides of the Atlantic.

The chancellor is unrepentant. She dismisses fears of any double-dip recession or prolonged 1930s-style downturn as exaggerated. “As far as Germany is concerned, I do not have that fear,” she says, “and if I think of the forecasts of the International Monetary Fund, I do not fear for the world economy either.”

One cause of the crisis “was that we did not have sustainable growth. In many countries growth was built on debt and [speculative] bubbles. In contrast, I now see the world in some regions returning to a sensible growth path. The greatest danger that threatens us is protectionism, and we are still not taking enough steps to ensure genuinely free trade”.

Ms Merkel defends the achievements of the G20 so far, arguing that the group has made notable progress in terms of global financial regulation and on the most substantial reform ever negotiated for the IMF. The Basel III agreement tightening rules on bank capital Ms Merkel depicts as “a splendid thing”, negotiated in less than two years, in contrast to the previous and less ambitious Basel II deal that took more than 10 years to finalise. “If that is now put into effect everywhere, we will have created a genuine crisis prevention mechanism,” she adds.

As for the IMF, “we have achieved the most comprehensive restructuring ever” in the run-up to the summit. “The new IMF structure reflects the power relationships in today’s world much better than before.” If the heads of government had not been breathing down their necks, the G20 finance ministers would not have been forced to reach agreement, she says.

The main gap on the regulatory map, she admits, is the lack of a deal on how to regulate banks that are considered “too big too fail”. Views were split within the Basel-based Financial Stability Board and “that remains an important task for 2011”.

The other item on the chancellor’s G20 agenda is to discuss exit strategies from the massive government spending policies pursued by the leading economies – including Germany – to prevent the global recession turning into a depression. Wolfgang Schäuble, the sharp-tongued finance minister who will accompany Ms Merkel to Seoul, left no doubt about his dismay at the US Federal Reserve’s latest decision to pump $600bn into the American economy in a new round of quantitative easing. He described US policy as “clueless”.

Ms Merkel is more measured. “The G20 has repeatedly stressed that the crisis can only be overcome if we dismantle all forms of obstruction and do not erect new ones,” she says with a disarming smile.

The two most powerful figures in the German government do not always see eye to eye on policy. Mr Schäuble was Ms Merkel’s predecessor as leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and sees himself as the standard-bearer for Germany’s traditionally strong commitment to the EU and to the euro. Yet on the questions of strict control of debt and deficits in all member states of the eurozone, to ensure the stability of the common currency, they are twin defenders of budget discipline.

They are joint architects of Germany’s own tough spending curbs, to cut €80bn ($111bn) over the next four years. Both are also behind a determined German push for tougher sanctions to prevent eurozone members breaking the rules embodied in its stability and growth pact – and for changes in the EU treaty to create a “permanent crisis resolution” mechanism to prevent a sovereign default.

She defends Germany’s insistence on drastic austerity measures in the weakest eurozone economies – Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain – as essential for currency stability and future sustainable growth. “I do not see any contradiction between growth and stability,” she says. “We have already seen the allergic reaction in the markets to countries that combined excessive debts with inadequate competitiveness.”

Sanctions agreed by EU leaders late last month will focus on competitiveness benchmarks as well as traditional ceilings on debt and deficit. Ms Merkel also wants a draconian political sanction – the suspension of voting rights – for countries that repeatedly fail to curb their borrowing.

On almost everything, the chancellor persuaded fellow leaders to accept the German position. But on suspending voting rights she was forced to admit defeat. The others would not accept such a drastic change of the EU treaty. “It is a matter of very fundamental values,” says Ms Merkel. “For that reason, suspension of voting rights will not be part of the restricted treaty change, but it is not off the agenda as a theme for the future.”

She defends her insistence on changing the treaty to enable a crisis mechanism to be established. It was not because of fear of what Germany’s constitutional court might say. “My attitude was based as much on my own European political conviction as on constitutional concerns,” she says. “If we were to face another case such as Greece after 2013 – something I hope will not happen – then we must not face the same emergency ... We need a legal provision for a situation where the stability of the euro as a whole is threatened.” That could not be achieved without treaty change.

In Brussels, Ms Merkel has been criticised for putting Germany’s national interests first in a way that her former mentor and predecessor, Helmut Kohl, would never have done. But as far as she is concerned, her battle for new rules in the eurozone has been driven entirely by her pro-European stance and a determination to ensure the survival of the currency.

“If the euro fails, then Europe will fail,” says Ms Merkel, repeating her own dramatic words to the Bundestag at the height of the Greek debt crisis in May. For the German chancellor, that is the bottom line.

Waning popularity, Not just the economy: a political tenet dispelled

Received political wisdom holds that governments benefit when economies thrive and suffer when they do not – just ask US president Barack Obama, writes Gerrit Wiesmann. Not so in Germany, where the popularity of the coalition led by Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats has waned as the economic news has turned positive.

A year ago, when the chancellor ended her partnership with the left-of-centre Social Democrats (SPD) and invited the liberal Free Democrats to join her in forming her second government, the export-reliant economy was on course to shrink 5 per cent in 2009. This year it is set to grow 3.5 per cent. In the same period, opinion polls have moved in the opposite direction. Today, they give the coalition 37 per cent approval – down 12 points since last autumn’s election. The opposition bloc of the SPD and the Greens has risen 14 points to 49 per cent.


Ms Merkel in part puts this down to the political in-fighting that dogged the government in its first months, notably a long and ultimately vain campaign by the FDP to secure tax cuts. “Initially for sure we were too occupied with ourselves in the coalition, but this period is now over and the results we’ve produced speak for our Christian Democrat-Liberal government,” she says, citing her new energy plan, which aims to boost production of renewables; budget consolidation; and healthcare reform.

With a respected poll showing that only 9 per cent of Germans attribute recovery to the government – while 42 per cent credit the world economy – it is noticeable that the chancellor does not say she expects the economy eventually to revive her fortunes. Instead, policy will prevail. “Many people will be convinced [about the government] when our decisions start to unfold their effects,” she says. “Whoever bases policy only on short-term polling trends is in the wrong job.”

But for now her energy plan – which includes extending the operational lifespans of the country’s 17 nuclear power stations – has galvanised the chancellor’s opponents and the strong anti-nuclear movement. At the weekend, 50,000 demonstrators played cat-and-mouse with 17,000 police officers in an attempt to stop a train depositing nuclear waste in a northern storage facility – protest on a scale not seen since the end of the last century.

It is the ever-more pragmatic Greens, rather than the second-placed SPD, that have profited most from such mobilisation, polling a record 20 per cent. The FDP can muster only a lowly 5 per cent. This has fired speculation that Ms Merkel might try to govern with the environmentalists after the 2014 election. She brushes aside the idea: “There are a great many differences between the Christian Democrats and the Greens.”

But such “black-green” alliances already exist at regional and local level – so “a great many” differences does not necessarily imply too many.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

Less frank on Frankfurt
On one subject Angela Merkel refuses to be drawn: who should be the next president of the European Central Bank. Speculation in Germany is rife that the chancellor would like to see Axel Weber, president of the Bundesbank, appointed the ECB’s first German head, succeeding Jean-Claude Trichet next year. “There is not a lot to say, because no decisions have been taken,” she insists, declining even to comment on whether the job should go to a German. There had not even been a “preliminary decision”. But she adds: “We will find a worthy successor to Jean-Claude Trichet.”



"FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. Privacy policy | Terms
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2010.