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The Merkel years

After 16 years of Angela Merkel's chancellorship, we assess her legacy and look at the challenges ahead for Germany and Europe

  • Angela Merkel

    ‘Long reigns often leave long shadows’: Europeans on Angela Merkel

    People across Europe share their views on German chancellor and role she has played in the EU
  • Italy’s Romano Prodi, Angela Merkel, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin, George W Bush, Japanese prime ninister Junichiro Koizumi, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen and EU Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barroso posing for a family photo at the 2006 G8 meeting in St Petersburg.

    ‘She defined modern Germany’: Blair, Barroso and Prodi on Angela Merkel

    When she first took office her fellow leaders included Blair, Chirac and Bush. Three of those at her first G8 summit look back on her legacy
  • Ursula Wanecki

    Blazers out, nail varnish in: as Merkel steps down, so does star doppelganger

    Ursula Wanecki’s second life as an impersonator started almost by accident. Sixteen years later, she is hanging up the blazers
  • Angle Merkel (right) visits the Queen at Windsor Castle in July.

    Europe is losing its moral compass – how will it find its way without Merkel?

    Marion Van Renterghem
    The pragmatic chancellor’s departure will be a turning point not only for Germany but also the EU, says the author and director Marion Van Renterghem
  • Workers remove an advertisement showing German chancellor Angela Merkel with a slogan that reads ‘Mother of Nation – Thanks For 16 Years of Hard Work’ before this weekend’s elections in Hamburg.

    What is the legacy of the Angela Merkel era?

    It’s Auf Wiedersehen to the chancellor this weekend as Germany goes to the polls. But what has been her impact on politics across Europe and on the global stage?
  • ‘Instead of closing the borders, in 2015-16 Merkel offered to receive one million new migrants.’

    The sorrowful dominatrix: cartoonists Steve Bell and Martin Rowson on drawing Angela Merkel

  • Montage of pictures of Merkel

    ‘Someone who knows who she is’: the staunch, subtle style of Angela Merkel

  • German chancellor Angela Merkel

    The crisis manager: Angela Merkel’s double-edged European legacy

    Across a decade of rolling threats, from the eurozone to Brexit and Covid, Germany’s outgoing chancellor focused on holding the EU together
  • Angela Merkel posing for photographs after various recordings of her annual new year's speech at the chancellery

    16 years in 16 words: the sayings that sum up Merkel’s Germany

  • Angela Merkel

    Germany decides: who will follow Angela Merkel?

  • Rafael Behr

    Brexit made an unlikely hero of Angela Merkel for Britain’s remainers

    Rafael Behr
  • Daniel Trilling

    How the refugee crisis created two myths of Angela Merkel

    Daniel Trilling
  • President Donald Trump with Angela Merkel and other G7 leaders during the 2018 summit in Canada.

    The Guardian view on Angela Merkel: farewell to a bulwark of stability

    Editorial: Though sometimes overly cautious, the German chancellor has been a standard bearer for a consensual way of doing politics
  • Timothy Garton Ash

    In Germany’s election, the fate of the EU is at stake

    Timothy Garton Ash
    After Merkel, the incoming coalition will have to prove that democracy can meet Europe’s great challenges, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash
  • Angela Merkel

    ‘Time to take sides’: post-Merkel era needs radical new direction, says study

    German chancellor’s consensus-building approach no longer sustainable in crisis-hit Europe, report says
  • Simon Tisdall

    Wanted: a true leader for Europe now Merkel’s reluctant reign is over

    Simon Tisdall

    Germany’s popular chancellor served her country well, but lacked a strategic vision for the EU in a world of predators
  • Angela Merkel

    Angela Merkel’s 16-year battle with the centrifugal forces of politics

    As the German chancellor prepares to leave office, it is clear her long leadership has had one key central theme
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