Well then let me try out my 2005 Xmas joke on you. You will have noted in the Malmberg/Morales post I mention the ‘demographic dividend’. Well logically, as all this unwinds and you get elderly instead of youth dependence (I know, I know, this is supposed to be a joke, I’m getting there)…… well then you should get a demographic penalty (not very funny is it?), ah but wait… courtesy of Wim Wenders and Peter Handke… you wouldn’t be prepared to agree that all that creeping pessimism was just another case of the goalie’s fear of the penalty kick, would you? :).

I think Christmas is near and people just want to end the year on a more positive note. She was the right news at the right time. And she helped getting something done, which is no simple achievement, to be honest. But the real cause, in my book is, that she was able to kill the deal Schröder made with Chirac in October 2002 when he was still very much the outsider on the Iraq issue and badly needed an ally. To bind France to Germany on this issue, he offered agricultural subsidies, the currency most liked by the French since the dawn of ages. Now Chirac’s a pretty lame duck due to his own political miscalculations and he has single handedly reduced France’s influence in the EU. I’m thinking France now needs Germany more than the other way round, which has not been the usual constellation in the EU. Merkel has a reputation for being rather pro Atlantist. I think that leaves her with more room for negotiation with the French than a lot of German chancellors had. And much of the British rebate is simply factually unjustifiable anymore, so that it’s hard to defend it once there is no real antagonist anymore. Enter Merkel. I don’t think it’s because of her, but because she was the right woman at the right time and place.