The Federal Chancellor got a bitter rebuff when she tried to oblige the Prime Ministers of the federal states to take drastically stricter corona measures.
Angela Merkel wanted her head through the wall once before.
That didn't go well.
A comment.
After 15 years in office, the
Chancellor is
no longer used to
contradicting herself
: In
Brussels
, 26 heads of government are standing at attention - Angela Merkel thought, 16 little
Prime Ministers will
be quickly brought into line
in Berlin
.
More or less like a raid, she presented the German state leaders with a resolution paper on Monday that was supposed to drastically tighten the lockdown provisions.
Of course, they declined with thanks and with surprising unanimity.
Angela Merkel in times of crisis: with her head through the wall
In her late
reign
, the Chancellor repeatedly falls back into a pattern of quasi-absolutist
development of power
that is neither good for her nor the country.
Even when it came to
refugee policy
, Merkel wanted her head through the wall, thereby dividing
Germany
and
Europe
.
In the Corona policy, too, with her attempt to govern the federal states' areas of competence, she is damaging the consensus and thus adding additional
uncertainty to society
.
Before the politicians, as Merkel and the Bavarian
Markus Söder
recently put it, “tighten the reins” - by the way, a rather strange flip of the tongue about dealing with the citizens - it is right to
wait for
the
effects of
the measures taken so far .
So far,
Germany has
come through the pandemic well - not in spite of, but because of
federalism
, which in the difficult search for meaningful
compromises
between lockdown and easing maintained moderation.
The Prime Ministers are right when they
vigorously oppose
attempts to
presume power
from the Chancellery.
A comment by Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis