But the Germans did make big mistakes. I think they pressed too hard on austerity and so now the income gap between North and South in Europe is worse than ever. They did not have a coherent policy on Ukraine because a lot of Europeans, even though they went along with sanctions, were grumbling about all the lost trade and, indeed, even within Germany that was the case. On Brexit, they could have had a deal in which they could have talked David Cameron back from doing his referendum, but not enough was done to let him off the hook. A lot of these problems, I think, resulted from basically Merkel just being overwhelmed.
On refugees, she showed great moral and humanitarian courage, but she hadn’t thought through the consequences, and she didn’t have any support, or much to speak of, from other European leaders. So as a result, you had this huge influx of people coming into Germany, and the Eastern countries, like Poland and Hungary, refusing to take any refugees. Germany stuck with 1 million and now you have this right-wing, xenophobic backlash, which is fueling the rise of the neo-Nazi party, Alternative für Deutschland, which may get more than 10 percent in the election this Sunday. [...]
I think, first of all, this will be her last term. In a way, she is going to be using this to establish her legacy. She realizes that what has been driving her is that she wants Europe to move forward. The question will be whether she challenges people within her party and even her own voting constituency to say, “Look, in order to save Europe, we are going to have to change our policies dramatically.” Macron has sided, basically, with the other southern states who are saying, “If you’re going to save Europe from populist nationalism, you need to do everything you can to create jobs, especially for young people, and cast aside this austerity drive.”
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