Tag: Angela Merkel

Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi and Thei Sein head Foreign Policy magazine's list of Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, at number 12, is the highest-ranking European.

France's German-speaking prime minister offered a worried Berlin reassurances on Thursday (15 November) that his government would reduce the deficit and prevent France from becoming the next victim of the euro crisis by applying a new economic model.

Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who reunified Germany and pushed the country into the euro, urged Europe to press ahead with closer integration despite a crisis of the single currency, saying the continent must never again descend into conflict.

In a rare political declaration, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), has rejected "binary choices" for the eurozone's future, dismissing calls for a "United States of Europe" as well as a return to national currencies to stop the sovereign debt crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering an EU 'convention' to draw up a new treaty for closer European political unification and help overcome the bloc's sovereign debt crisis, the weekly Der Spiegel reported on Sunday (26 August). Merkel later denied the report.

The Eurogroup today (20 July) announced it would grant a bailout of up to €100 billion to Spain to help the country recapitalise its banks, following a telephone conference call during which finance ministers gave their backing to the rescue plan.

The leaders of France and Germany joined in a symbolic celebration of unity on Sunday (8 July), hailing a relationship that has brought peace to Europe for 50 years. French President François Hollande underlined that the proposed banking union is the “first step to a budgetary union, which will open the way to stability, growth, and tighter ties.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to bury once and for all the idea of common eurozone bonds yesterday (26 June), as Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti repeated calls to use the EU's bailout funds to ease pressure on Italian debt.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted pressure for common eurozone bonds or a more flexible use of Europe's rescue funds but agreed with leaders of France, Italy and Spain on a €130 billion package to revive growth.

The EU isn't sure of its own political future, while Ukraine has no foreign policy strategy at all. However disappointing this may be, in these circumstances both Brussels and Kyiv have no other choice than to "imitate" that they are maintaining relations, agues Viktor Tkachuk.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s insistence that the EU should not change the terms of the Greek rescue programme came under thinly disguised criticism yesterday (19 June), ahead of a key eurozone ministers meeting planned at the end of the week.

French President François Hollande wants the European Union to agree before the end of 2012 on growth-boosting measures worth €120 billion, putting him on a collision course with German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has ruled out further spending to restart Europe's ailing economy.

In a television interview, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the euro zone was moving inevitably towards a "political union" requiring nations to cede more sovereignty, and that would lead to more of a multi-speed Europe, with non-euro states in the slow lane.

France's new president François Hollande arrived in Berlin for his first meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel only hours after his inauguration yesterday (15 May). The two expressed broad agreement over the necessity to kick-start the European economy but they also had to acknowledge differences over their concepts of growth.

In Berlin, he is known as Angela Merkel's smartest minister. But Norbert Röttgen has led a lacklustre campaign ahead of key elections this Sunday (13 May) in North Rhine-Westphalia, where opinion polls predict a historical defeat for the Christian Democrats in Germany's most populous state.

François Hollande’s election as president of France has been hailed as a decisive shift of the political balance in the European Union, but the policies he will actually push for in Brussels remain unclear, EurActiv France reports.

François Hollande’s victory in the French presidential elections marks the end of both the ‘Merkozy’ duo and their disastrously recessionary austerity-only policies, argues Sergei Stanishev.

If François Hollande wins the French presidential elections on Sunday, Italy can help forge a rebalancing of the Franco-German couple, especially after Angela Merkel yesterday (3 May) said Europe needs "political courage and creativity rather than billions of euro,” reports EurActiv Italy.

Germans voted in the state of Saarland yesterday (25 March) in the first of a trio of state elections that could banish Angela Merkel's junior coalition partners from regional parliaments, weakening her centre-right government ahead of next year's federal vote. 

Conservative European leaders from Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain have banded together to shun the campaign of François Hollande, the socialist candidate for the presidential election in France and front-runner in the opinion polls, according to weekly magazine Der Spiegel.

For British MP Denis MacShane, there is no point in praising the German economic model. He says the French obsession with the "Merkozy" couple can create errors of judgement.

Germany may not be ready to back an increase in Europe's bailout fund at a summit in Brussels this week, delaying efforts to meet international demands for Europe to strengthen its defences against the region's sovereign debt crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has revealed her long-term vision for Europe, saying the debt crisis is forcing eurozone countries towards a federalist model and placing her on a collision course with the more eurosceptic UK.

A controversy over the financial dealings of German President Christian Wulff has intensified amid allegations he threatened editor of a popular newspaper in an effort to suppress reporting about a loan he received from a friendly businessman.