The Chancellor in familiar surroundings. She saw dozens of heads of state come and go.
(Photo: imago images / ZUMA Press)
Rome It won’t be her last visit to Rome. At least if Angela Merkel takes the ritual seriously: On Sunday morning, the Chancellor threw a coin over her right shoulder – into the Trevi Fountain. This should not only bring luck, but also lead you safely back to the Eternal City.
Coincidence or not: Merkel is right in the middle of her G20 colleagues in the staging, not the host, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Merkel is once again at the center of power. Where it has been romping around for almost 16 years.
Rome and the World Climate Conference that is now beginning in Glasgow: For Merkel they are the farewell to the big international stage. The 67-year-old is only executive in office. Shortly after Nikolaus, according to the announcement of the negotiating traffic light parties, the new government could stand – and thus take over Merkel’s future successor.
Olaf Scholz is always at Merkel’s side in Rome
Merkel always has him by her side during the G20 deliberations, even during bilateral talks. It is due to chance that Merkel and Olaf Scholz are together in Rome: If Scholz were Foreign Minister or Minister of the Interior, this historic handover would not have taken place. But as the incumbent finance minister, according to the G20 protocol, he is there.
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For the interlocutors, this acts as a sign of strong continuity. There is great foreign interest in the German change of power, as is the fear of a vacuum. The joint appearance shows that a lot remains the same.
After dinner in the Quirinal Palace, to which Italian President Sergio Mattarella invited, Merkel and Scholz drive back to the delegation hotel. It’s almost midnight, but the two of them answer questions from German journalists. It is a background discussion, it is not allowed to quote from it.
But what you can say: Merkel and Scholz pass the balls to each other. The relationship between the two is polite and harmonious, and they sat together in the cabinet for many years. He as vice, she as boss. There will be political differences, she said after the federal election in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. But with Scholz in the Chancellery, she will “sleep peacefully”.
In Rome, Merkel moves as routinely as ever. A year and a half of the pandemic with hundreds of video conferences instead of real meetings have not changed that. Whether a short chat with French President Emmanuel Macron, who was sitting next to Merkel in the futuristic “La Nuvola” conference center in the south of Rome, or a four-way summit with Americans, British and French on the critical Iran agreement: Merkel jumps between the topics without any problems here. Even at dinner time there is still time for personal questions to the other leaders.
Already in 1995 at the climate summit
Their mediating qualities, their experience and their network – this was already evident when they said goodbye after what was probably the last of 107 EU summits a week ago – will be missing in the future. An EU summit without Merkel is like “Rome without the Vatican or Paris without the Eiffel Tower,” said Council President Charles Michel. Former US President Barack Obama sent a video message praising her reliability and thanking her for her moral standards.
The climate conference also closes a personal circle for Merkel. In 1995 the first conference took place in Berlin of all places, when Merkel was freshly in office as Environment Minister.
Since then, the forecasts of climate researchers have deteriorated and the commitments of the international community tightened. Nonetheless, the world is lagging behind when it comes to global climate targets: The target announced in Paris in 2015 of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve.
The topic has accompanied the Christian Democrat Merkel her entire political life. When she drove to the glaciers of Greenland with the then Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel in 2007 and photos of Merkel in a red winter jacket adorned the newspapers, she was proclaimed “Climate Chancellor” for a short time. However, it did not meet the high expectations of environmentalists.
Now, at the end of her long chancellorship, she could once again set an example, completely free from power games. In Scotland, at the climate summit, Merkel will be one of the first speakers. It could call for more ambition in climate protection, set the tone for the next two summit weeks.
When she, together with Scholz, comes to the press conference after the G20 summit, she shows how much she is preoccupied with the topic. The beauty of Rome shows “what historical responsibility we act here so that one day people will look back on our time in such a way that something sensible has emerged”.
More: Departure or standstill? These are the sticking points of the climate conference in Glasgow