Word: merkel
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...budget agreed," says Denis MacShane, Britain's Europe Minister until last May. "It is probably the unhappiest year in European construction since the end of World War II." And the malaise goes deeper than simply gridlock in E.U. institutions. The German election this fall satisfied few; Chancellor Angela Merkel presides over a fragile grand coalition that seems unlikely to turn around the country's ailing economy anytime soon. The eruption of riots across France this fall added to a sense that Europe's leaders are out of touch with their citizens. Add to this a summer punctuated by fatal bombings...
...French Foreign Minister and European Commissioner Michel Barnier says Brussels is "worried whether France will play its part in getting Europe going again." The questions of discrimination and colonial legacies raised by the riots, along with the gathering political battle to succeed Chirac, have kept France introverted. In Germany, Merkel is trying to walk a narrow line between the need for economic reform and the maintenance of a fragile coalition with her own Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats - both of which are undergoing painful internal shakedowns. Hosting Chirac in Berlin last week, she aligned Germany with France in criticizing...
...wonder governments have been more circumspect in their response. After the new German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, discussed the matter with Rice in Washington earlier this week, his boss, new German Chancellor Angela Merkel, took the carrot approach where her predecessor might have preferred the stick. "I think we can trust ... that the US government is taking European concerns seriously," she told parliament, "and that quite soon (it) will clarify the recent reports on alleged CIA prisons." British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, formally asked Rice to address "parliamentary and public concerns" over...
...stepped down over differences with the left wing of his own team. Then Edmund Stoiber, the silver-haired leader of the Christian Democratic Union's (cdu) sister party, the Christian Social Union, also quit, claiming he could not work with anyone but his close friend Müntefering. Angela Merkel's attempt to stitch together a government as Germany's first female Chancellor was thrown into doubt. are you politicians crazy? ran a headline in Bild, a conservative tabloid. "Jobs at long last," joked the Tageszeitung, a left-wing daily, noting the new vacancies at the top. But these high...
...Officially, both France and Germany support Turkey’s bid, yet just over 20 percent of the population in each of those countries agree with their governments’ position. Indeed, influential leaders in each of these countries, including French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are fervently against Turkey’s inclusion in the EU. Further east, an October poll showed that Greeks have become more skeptical about Turkish membership in the last year—almost 60 percent of Greek voters now oppose that possibility. To make things worse, Austria almost imploded negotiations...