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BRUSSELS: European leaders gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel a standing ovation on Friday at her final EU summit after a 16-year reign that helped information the bloc by way of main ups and downs.
Merkel has attended a staggering 107 EU summits that noticed a number of the greatest twists in latest European historical past, together with the eurozone debt disaster, an influx of Syrian refugees, Brexit and the creation of the bloc’s landmark pandemic restoration fund.
“You’re a monument,” the host of the summits, European Council chief Charles Michel, mentioned within the closed-door homage to her, in accordance with an official within the room.
An EU summit “with out Angela is like Rome with out the Vatican or Paris with out the Eiffel tower”, Michel mentioned.
He handed Merkel a perspex dice with a globe described as an “inventive impression” of the Europa constructing the place EU summits are hosted.
Merkel, with attribute lack of fanfare, thanked journalists for his or her lengthy nights at summits, although she provided a robust phrase of warning on the challenges nonetheless going through the EU, and her German successor.
“I’m leaving the European Union, so far as my accountability of Federal Chancellor is anxious, at a time limit the place there’s trigger for concern,” she mentioned.
“Now we have overcome many crises however we’ve a sequence of unresolved issues,” she mentioned, citing disputes on migration, the bloc’s economic system, and rule of regulation in EU international locations.
– ‘Compromise machine’ – Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel known as Merkel a “compromise machine” who “normally did discover one thing to unite us” by way of marathon intra-EU negotiations.
“Europe will miss her,” he mentioned.
Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg known as her “undoubtedly an incredible European” and “a haven of peace, in case you like, throughout the European Union”.
Her departure, he mentioned, “will depart a gap”.
Her remaining summit, a two-day affair in Brussels, leaned as soon as once more on her soft-power expertise to ease a burning row with Poland over its rejection of the EU’s authorized order — one thing many believed could possibly be the following existential risk to the European Union.
On the primary day on Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki defended an October 7 ruling by his nation’s Constitutional Court docket that mentioned EU regulation utilized solely in particular, restricted areas and Polish regulation prevailed in all others.
Merkel, backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, spent her appreciable political capital pushing for dialogue with Poland, warning in opposition to a “cascade” of authorized fights if the difficulty blew up into challenges earlier than the European Court docket of Justice.
The message was acquired by the European Fee and international locations such because the Netherlands and Belgium that wished a extra muscular slapdown of Poland, which they accuse of rolling again democratic norms by eradicating judicial independence in nationwide courts.
– ‘Ideas over self-interest’ – East-west feuding has been a recurrent theme in Merkel’s lengthy tenure.
Her mediating position mirrored each the standing of Germany because the EU’s financial powerhouse with sway over lots of the former Soviet-bloc international locations, whose membership to the union tilted the political steadiness away from Paris and in direction of Berlin.
It additionally spoke to Merkel’s household background, of German and Polish descent, in addition to her tactic of discreet behind-the-scenes nudging whereas conflicting forces exhausted themselves, earlier than stepping in with a compromise answer.
In a shock video posted on Twitter by the EU’s Michel, former US president Barack Obama praised Merkel as a kind of uncommon leaders who put “their ideas above any slender definition of self curiosity”.
“It’s a testomony to your character that you just’d most likely take pleasure in working at a gathering of the European Council greater than being the centre of consideration like this,” he added.
Germany continues to be within the strategy of placing collectively a authorities to interchange Merkel’s, following September elections she didn’t contest that noticed her conservative CDU get together handed a drubbing.
Merkel has attended a staggering 107 EU summits that noticed a number of the greatest twists in latest European historical past, together with the eurozone debt disaster, an influx of Syrian refugees, Brexit and the creation of the bloc’s landmark pandemic restoration fund.
“You’re a monument,” the host of the summits, European Council chief Charles Michel, mentioned within the closed-door homage to her, in accordance with an official within the room.
An EU summit “with out Angela is like Rome with out the Vatican or Paris with out the Eiffel tower”, Michel mentioned.
He handed Merkel a perspex dice with a globe described as an “inventive impression” of the Europa constructing the place EU summits are hosted.
Merkel, with attribute lack of fanfare, thanked journalists for his or her lengthy nights at summits, although she provided a robust phrase of warning on the challenges nonetheless going through the EU, and her German successor.
“I’m leaving the European Union, so far as my accountability of Federal Chancellor is anxious, at a time limit the place there’s trigger for concern,” she mentioned.
“Now we have overcome many crises however we’ve a sequence of unresolved issues,” she mentioned, citing disputes on migration, the bloc’s economic system, and rule of regulation in EU international locations.
– ‘Compromise machine’ – Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel known as Merkel a “compromise machine” who “normally did discover one thing to unite us” by way of marathon intra-EU negotiations.
“Europe will miss her,” he mentioned.
Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg known as her “undoubtedly an incredible European” and “a haven of peace, in case you like, throughout the European Union”.
Her departure, he mentioned, “will depart a gap”.
Her remaining summit, a two-day affair in Brussels, leaned as soon as once more on her soft-power expertise to ease a burning row with Poland over its rejection of the EU’s authorized order — one thing many believed could possibly be the following existential risk to the European Union.
On the primary day on Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki defended an October 7 ruling by his nation’s Constitutional Court docket that mentioned EU regulation utilized solely in particular, restricted areas and Polish regulation prevailed in all others.
Merkel, backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, spent her appreciable political capital pushing for dialogue with Poland, warning in opposition to a “cascade” of authorized fights if the difficulty blew up into challenges earlier than the European Court docket of Justice.
The message was acquired by the European Fee and international locations such because the Netherlands and Belgium that wished a extra muscular slapdown of Poland, which they accuse of rolling again democratic norms by eradicating judicial independence in nationwide courts.
– ‘Ideas over self-interest’ – East-west feuding has been a recurrent theme in Merkel’s lengthy tenure.
Her mediating position mirrored each the standing of Germany because the EU’s financial powerhouse with sway over lots of the former Soviet-bloc international locations, whose membership to the union tilted the political steadiness away from Paris and in direction of Berlin.
It additionally spoke to Merkel’s household background, of German and Polish descent, in addition to her tactic of discreet behind-the-scenes nudging whereas conflicting forces exhausted themselves, earlier than stepping in with a compromise answer.
In a shock video posted on Twitter by the EU’s Michel, former US president Barack Obama praised Merkel as a kind of uncommon leaders who put “their ideas above any slender definition of self curiosity”.
“It’s a testomony to your character that you just’d most likely take pleasure in working at a gathering of the European Council greater than being the centre of consideration like this,” he added.
Germany continues to be within the strategy of placing collectively a authorities to interchange Merkel’s, following September elections she didn’t contest that noticed her conservative CDU get together handed a drubbing.
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