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00:00Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming out with her new memoir this Tuesday.
00:05It's called Freedom, and its 700 pages are full of reflections on her journey from growing
00:09up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany to her political life as head of the biggest
00:14economy in Europe.
00:16Morgan Air takes a closer look.
00:19In a now infamous moment in 2017, when then President Donald Trump refused to shake her
00:24hand in front of cameras, the former chancellor says in her new memoir that the president's
00:29actions were deliberate.
00:32Trump knew precisely what he was doing.
00:35He wanted to give people something to talk about with his behaviour, while I had acted
00:39as though I were having a conversation with someone completely normal.
00:44She went on to say that Trump claimed she had ruined Germany and that he was fascinated
00:49by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
00:53I had the distinct impression he was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial
00:58tendencies.
01:00On Putin himself and their many meetings, Merkel said he was
01:05someone who was always on guard not to be traced badly and always ready to dish out
01:09punishment including power games with a dog and making others wait.
01:16She's referring to a meeting in Russia in 2007 when President Putin brought his Labrador
01:21despite knowing about Merkel's fear of dogs.
01:24In her book Merkel also defends some of her decisions during her 16 years as chancellor.
01:30One of those moments she reflects on is a NATO summit in 2008 when President George
01:35W. Bush declared his desire to extend membership to Georgia and Ukraine.
01:40Angela Merkel and other European colleagues opposed it.
01:44The ex-chancellor explains her resistance to include the former Soviet states in NATO
01:49saying it would have pushed Putin to act more aggressively to prevent Ukraine from joining
01:53the alliance.
01:54We're going to talk more about Merkel's life and work now with German expert Cornelia
02:00Wohl who joins me live from Berlin.
02:02Cornelia, thank you for taking the time to speak to us today.
02:05Let's start more specifically talking about Angela Merkel's relationship with Putin.
02:09She was one of the few leaders to actually be able to speak Russian to Putin.
02:13What kind of effect did that have on their relationship?
02:18Well Merkel was certainly somebody who mistrusted Putin from the very early meetings they have
02:24because she says he reminded her of the Stasi personnel she'd known in East Germany.
02:29And because she spoke Russian, because she had a very good idea of his mindset, she was
02:35always very clear that she thought he was dangerous, even though at the very beginning
02:39of her term he did not have the full vision laid out of what he would do later, which
02:44he formulated quite clearly as time went on.
02:48And despite that, she actually got a lot of criticism over the years about her relationship
02:52with Putin.
02:53In the book she says that despite all the difficulties, she was right not to let the
02:57contacts with Russia be broken off.
02:59Do you think now in retrospect she was right to have done that?
03:04She says she stands by her decision and she explains it with the same context but a little
03:09bit differently.
03:10She says what we say now would have been the right strategy, so a stronger, more determined
03:16stronger stance and also possibly sanctions or cutting off economic ties.
03:21At the time were possibly what would have triggered the reaction that Putin was planning
03:25anyway.
03:26The NATO summit you just referred to in 2008 was a moment where really the European countries,
03:32Germany and France, split from the U.S. approach, the U.S. which really wanted to send a strong
03:36signal with NATO accession granted to Georgia and to Ukraine.
03:41And Germany and France said that that was a dangerous game because what would happen
03:45during the secession period, what would happen by the time that you say these two countries
03:50will join the NATO alliance, is that delivering an argument, for example, for Putin to use
03:55and that's something she wanted to manage because she wasn't sure that starting with
04:00the secession talks NATO would have been able to really defend these two countries.
04:04In 2008 when then Russia attacked Georgia she said she felt that she was vindicated
04:10but now the argument is made the other way around including by Ukraine and Vladimir Zelensky.
04:15Had you given us some more hope at that time maybe we would have been able to defend ourselves
04:20better.
04:21Cornelia, what about Merkel's relationship with French presidents over the years?
04:25I mean 16 years in power she saw quite a few go by.
04:29Well we've always said the German-Franco relationship is very important and Angela
04:34Merkel certainly had to move from a lot of Franco-German couples into a relationship
04:41that was important to her but it was quite different to work with Jacques Chirac, to
04:46work with Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande and later Emmanuel Macron.
04:49I think she always tried her best.
04:52There's chemistry that is part of that relationship of course as well but more fundamentally there
04:57are also some very substantial areas of disagreement that we now see have broken out possibly even
05:04worse and that will always halt advance on foreign policy and European issues.
05:09The final years of Merkel's leadership were defined by the mass refugee influx of 2015.
05:16There are some critics now that say that she's to blame for the rise of the far right in
05:19Germany thanks in part to that open door migrant policy.
05:23Is there any truth to that?
05:25The two parts of her legacy that are most critically evaluated now and you have to remember
05:31Merkel disappeared from politics until this very moment where she published her memoirs.
05:36People are now really trying to say these 16 years to a certain degree laid the bedrock
05:43of the crisis we're now facing.
05:44On the one hand it is the issue of migration because she was a very strong defender of
05:50the politics in 2015 and 2016 to let migrants come in more freely and then to negotiate
05:57at the same time for example with Turkey in order to manage this migration that she had
06:03welcomed and that she said Germany should welcome.
06:06The second is the relationship with Russia and these two items of her legacy now come
06:10out at a moment where she wants to publish her memoirs but nobody knew it would also
06:15be at the same time that the German government would break into pieces.
06:19So the question to a certain degree that Germany is now grappling with is whose legacy is it?
06:24Is it Merkel the chancellor?
06:26Is it the CDU her party?
06:28And how much is the candidate that will run for that party, Friedrich Merz, part of that
06:32legacy?
06:33And how much is it part of the coalition government that she ran as a chancellor which
06:36included the SPD and Olaf Scholz who was in that government?
06:40So currently discussing the legacy of Angela Merkel's work really is also a question about
06:45what government do we want to support going forward and I do think it will influence the
06:49election.
06:50And there's another interesting piece of this puzzle that doesn't seem to be out there so
06:54much in regards to these memoirs is that we have to remember that Merkel was one of the
06:57first women in power and for such a long time.
07:01How much do you think just the fact that she was a woman in this boys club of her day
07:05is going to really be part of the memoirs as well?
07:09It's certainly part of the great interest that many people have in her career.
07:13She's always been a very timid feminist.
07:17She doesn't describe herself as feminist.
07:18She never really put the feminist claims on her own requests or demands but she's been
07:25a woman in all of these decisions and she says it was part of what I wanted to achieve
07:31almost independently of the fact that I was a woman but of course the role model that
07:34she then became is quite important.
07:37I think she is today a little bit more at ease with, she was once asked are you a feminist
07:43and she almost wasn't able to answer.
07:45She's more at ease in saying that there is some feminism in that just having had that
07:48career and it's now being reexamined but it's also something that possibly worked because
07:54it wasn't a subject of discussion.
07:56It was just that she was a woman and she wanted to be part of these discussions.
08:01She wanted to be at the table.
08:02She wanted to be the person running the party and later the government and that made her
08:07a very unique figure and still somebody that a lot of people consider as a role model.
08:12It certainly did and that book is coming out in 30 languages so I'm sure it's something
08:15a lot of people around the world will be reading.
08:17Cornelia Wall, thanks so much for taking the time to speak to us there live from Berlin.