During the recent electoral campaign in Germany, a video went viral. This showed Angela Merkel in 1997, when she was Minister of the Environment of the Helmut Kohl government, explaining with solvency (her professional training was in the field of physics) the urgency of acting in the face of climate change.

One reason the video went viral is that some 25 years later (16 of them under Merkel), among Europe’s main economies, Germany is still the one that emits the most carbon dioxide per capita. Because, for example, the country still depends on fossil fuels to generate 44% of the electrical energy it requires.

That was a common pattern of behavior under her tenure: Merkel understood the nature of the problems she faced fairly well, but she often sought negotiated solutions that did not inflict a high political cost on her. Which, at times, implied postponing the implementation of a definitive solution to certain problems.

For example, during 15 of her 16 years in office, Merkel opposed the issuance of a joint debt by the Eurozone (that is, countries that share the euro as a common currency). The logic behind that proposal was always clear.

The public debt of Greece or Italy was high as a proportion of their economies, but, as a whole, the Eurozone has lower ratios of fiscal deficit and public debt as a proportion of its economy than the United States or Great Britain.

The problem was less in the fundamentals of the economy than in the political fragmentation: the Eurozone had a single monetary policy, but 19 fiscal policies.

This implies that, when a country has public debt problems, recession or trade balance deficit, it cannot issue to reduce the real value of its debt in national currency, lower certain interest rates to encourage investment, or devalue to increase interest and competitiveness of its exports.

In other words, the relatively less developed countries cannot appeal to the same means to which the more developed countries appealed before the European Union (EU) existed. It is precisely for reasons like this that, as compensation for the relatively less developed countries, there are economic and social convergence programs within the EU.

These are not the product of the bonhomie of those who govern the more developed countries, but of their understanding that projects that limit the autonomy of decision-making of national governments (such as the common market, shared environmental standards or the common currency) benefit the economies of their countries in greater proportion than the rest.

The issuance of Eurobonds, that is, public debt backed by a collective guarantee of the Eurozone, had to be understood within this context. And, in return, certain conditions were required in terms of public policies from the recipient countries.

The proof that Merkel understood this logic is the fact that, in her last year in office, she finally accepted the proposal to issue public debt under the guarantee of the whole of the Eurozone. But even then he raised it as an exceptional measure, a product of the pandemic.

That is, under pressing circumstances, Merkel tended to do the right thing. But, precisely, he used to wait until circumstances were pressing before acting.

It could be argued that your government faced so many crises (the Great Recession in 2008, the euro crisis in 2010, the migration crisis in 2015, or the pandemic in 2020), that circumstances were always pressing.

But his government was also the beneficiary of fortunate circumstances that – such as the labor reform approved by its predecessor, the eastward expansion of the EU or China’s entry into the World Trade Organization – provided the German economy with additional resources that made it easier the task of dealing with those crises.

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