Word: der
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Europeans. As was painfully obvious during last week's summit meeting of the 25 E.U. heads of government in Brussels, Europe's elected leaders are either on the defensive or lame ducks. After his party was trounced in a state poll last month, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has called a snap election for the fall - which he looks likely to lose. In France, President Jacques Chirac is foundering after his country's voters rejected the European Constitution; in Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair recently saw his parliamentary majority sharply reduced; and in recessionary Italy, Premier Silvio Berlusconi...
...Schröder's Political Future...
...German and an avid supporter of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder [June 6]. Schröder has been a stellar head of government from the day he took office. Always aware of Germany's past and its responsibility to the future yet never losing sight of the social and economic challenges his country faces, Schröder has followed in the footsteps of the greatest statesman Germany ever had, Willy Brandt. In my view, he is a pretty difficult act to follow...
...interview with TIME, Schröder, 61, vowed he would prevail. "Giving up is not one of my character traits," he said. But lately the leader of the world's third largest economy has certainly looked in political peril. The nation's unemployment rate is at a post-World War II high of nearly 12%, and the rate of business closures has reached record levels. As a result, the Social Democrats trail the conservative Christian Democrats, the main opposition party in the fall elections, by 15 points in opinion polls...
...leader of the Christian Democrats is Angela Merkel, who, as a protégé of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's, is known to be a tough political fighter, if lacking in Schröder's campaign experience. Should her party succeed in September, Merkel, 50, a former physics professor who was raised in East Germany, would become Germany's first female Chancellor. She has said her immediate focus would be domestic issues, particularly the economy. (She supports loosening job-protection laws, overhauling pensions and curbing the power of trade unions.) But on international affairs, she is likely to be somewhat friendlier...