EDITORIAL
by N. Peter Kramer, EU & International Correspondent
Angela Merkel’s last Summit
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hancellor Angela Merkel showed a rare flash of frustration, when she said that fellow EU leaders’ decision to scupper her idea to hold a summit with Vladimir Putin showed that ‘we don’t trust each other much’. And indeed, the dispute over an EU- Russia summit casted a pall over the last EU summit of one of the EU’s longest-serving leaders. But the heated discussions during this summit were not her smooth send-off everyone expected. Angela Merkel, due to step down this year after 16 years as German chancellor, has in her long experience of EU summits shown mastery at reading the room and ensuring arguments went her way. But this time, her last summit, that approach failed completely. After the summit, a disappointed chancellor spelt out what had driven her to push the idea of an EU- Russia
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summit. One of her reasons for it was the spectacle of Joe Biden meeting directly with Putin in Geneva after his visit to Brussels. It was absolutely not, Merkel insisted, a question of a ‘new start’ in EU-Russian relations, but a way to figuring out how to resolve current conflicts with Russia. ‘Even in the cold war we always had channels of communication’, she said. While individual countries like Germany and France continue to talk to the Kremlin, it would make more sense to speak to Moscow with one EU voice, according to Merkel. The incident showed once more that in politics, saying you are going to leave means that you are ‘out’ at the same moment even when you are still present. However it also showed the weakness of an EU, that wants to be seen as a geopolitical superpower alongside the US. But that will take some time, certainly without Angela Merkel.
