The Times interview with Angela Merkel

Full transcript of interview with Angela Merkel

The sudden spike of alarm about Russia turning off the oil to Europe shows why Angela Merkel has picked the right moment to sound tough on Moscow. You can’t fault her on timing, or on her choice of targets in the hugely ambitious foreign agenda she has set for herself, as Germany takes on the presidency of the European Union and the G8. Her analysis is beyond contest but her solutions are less substantial: complex, sometimes contradictory, and often simply too hard to deliver.

When Merkel finally wrested the chancellorship from Gerhard Schröder in a tussle that turned partly on his anti-Americanism, it was no surprise that she seized on foreign policy to make her mark. It has always been a refuge for politicians faced with surly opposition at home.

More than a year into the job, she appears to find her place on the world stage exhilarating. Before she became Chancellor she was widely criticised for being uncomfortable speaking in public but now she is animated, emphatic, even impish. Talking to The Times in the glass offices of the Chancellery on Monday evening, she briskly sketched out the role she wants Germany to take in Europe and the Middle East, gesturing rapidly and pausing only to pop small, decorated biscuits into her mouth.

The temptation to take a tilt at a huge range of problems is understandable. This year Germany is in the position that Britain was in in 2005: it has the influence of its twin presidencies, and the immeasurable clout that follows surprisingly strong economic performance. To want to repair the relations with the US that Schröder had so determinedly frayed was sensible; all Merkel had to do was to turn up in Washington, and she has done that. But that does not turn smoothly into a common US-German front.

On the Middle East, she says that President Bush is convinced of the need for a new drive by the Quartet — the US, EU, United Nations and Russia. It is beyond dispute, as she says, that “the Quartet gives us a framework to co-ordinate international activity without every state making its separate contribution”. Yet her pledge of European readiness may not be enough to persuade Bush to overcome his reluctance to get involved where petitions by others in the region, Tony Blair and the Baker-Hamilton commission on Iraq have failed.

On Iran — despite Merkel’s recent talks into the early morning with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister — Germany has not been as inclined to be tough on Tehran as the US and Britain would have liked. On Turkey, despite US (and British) desire to see it progressing towards EU membership, Merkel has stuck to proposing only a privileged partnership.

You might call these points of difference from the US a sign that she is holding her own — but it compromises her claim to be closer to Washington, however genial the tone of talks. There appears even less promise in her calls for tweaking the terms of transatlantic trade: mutual recognition of technical standards in car manufacture; global regulation of hedge funds; and helping European companies to delist themselves from US stock exchanges. The first is protectionist; the second a more sophisticated version of the same; and the third trivial.

Equally, making a revival of the ill-fated EU constitution the centrepiece of Germany’s European presidency sounds bold but fails to tackle the huge obstacles. “The German presidency doesn’t presume that we will solve the problem of the constitution by the end of our term,” she acknowledges, arguing that “the task is to develop a road map” for voters in the 2009 European parliamentary elections. But she skates over the French and Dutch rejection of the notion in its original form, as well as Britain’s unyielding distaste.

And energy security? No one could disagree, with Russia staging its seasonal row with its most dependent customers. Yet Germany is still Russia’s partner in the new Baltic pipeline despite Polish protests. Nothing Merkel has said on this, or climate change, made it seem more likely that Germany will turn to nuclear power.

There is a lot of dexterous stage-setting in Merkel’s foreign policy. But if she really intends to drive through these policies, it will take political capital and a messy brawl. At that point coalition politics at home might seem like light relief.

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone