Word: merkel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...coalition government led by center-right Chancellor Angela Merkel, the scandal could hardly have come at a worse time. Germany is already engaged in a deepening ideological battle over the bloated salaries of its top corporate executives. Socialists are calling for a statutory minimum wage, a move most conservatives oppose, as well as for a law to limit executive salaries. Many voters are angry that ordinary workers have to carry the burden of Germany's economic reforms while executives give themselves huge pay increases, and they have been flocking to an opposition party called the Left, an amalgam...
...expects a communist uprising, of course: The Left is still a negligible presence in most of Germany. But as the police swarmed out on Monday, it was becoming clear that society's wrath would be swifter and harsher than usual for Germans deemed greedy enough to shirk taxes. Even Merkel, generally reluctant to rush to judgment, seemed stunned by the breadth of the scandal. "I think a lot of people in Germany feel the way I do: that this goes well beyond what I ever imagined could be possible," Merkel told reporters...
...tone was even harsher from Merkel's aides and leaders of the other political parties, many of whom called for stiff jail sentences for those convicted of tax evasion. "It would be unbearable if, in the end, deals were made instead of putting people on trial," said Kurt Beck, chairman of the Social Democrats, junior partner in the federal government coalition...
...Merkel's political challenge now is to prevent the widespread anger over the tax evasion scandal from becoming a broader political crisis. In Germany, it's not necessarily enough to just throw a few corporate executives in jail and be done with it. A poll conducted earlier this month by Infratest Dimap found that 69% of Germans feel wealth in the country is unjustly distributed. And that sense could have political ramifications: polls show declining support for Germany's social market economic system. The Left has surpassed the Greens and the Free Democrats to become, with the allegiance...
...this, I think, is beginning to be understood in Europe. With the election of younger, muscular Atlanticists such as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, debate on security matters is moving beyond the peaceful pieties of the post-war generation to a recognition that the world really can be a dangerous place, and that sometimes the only way to combat that danger is by force. "Domestic politics has enslaved foreign policy to the point where it is endangering Germany's alliances," says Jan Techau, of the German Council on Foreign Relations. "German political élites need to speak about repositioning foreign...