Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged the political establishment and the media to show greater patience with the natural process of debate within coalition governments. In an interview with Focus magazine, published in advance excerpts on Thursday, Merkel criticised the tendency to immediately label any internal government discussion as a conflict.
"Debate is now instantly called 'dispute'," Merkel told the magazine. "Politicians need to make clear that there is no solution without some form of debate." She advised the current Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, to approach the coalition partner SPD with "an open mind"
The former chancellor took the government's side against accusations of internal division. She pointed out that expecting uniform opinions on complex issues such as healthcare reform within a coalition was "virtually impossible." These are processes of forming positions that take place in the public sphere, she explained, adding that all sides needed to handle them responsibly rather than turning every difference into a scandal.
Merkel expressed concern over a growing tendency to dismiss political compromises. "The compromise is then torn apart as well, even though it lies in the very nature of things," she emphasised. "Compromise is what makes diversity viable and capable of winning a majority." To illustrate her point, she drew a personal comparison, noting that even within her own family of five or six people, she could not always get her way.
Reflecting on her own time in government, Merkel underlined the importance of maintaining direct and personal communication channels between coalition party leaders. Regardless of whether her partner was the FDP or the SPD, she said it had always been essential to have a space for conversations with party chairs where a fundamental basis of trust existed.
In the same interview, Merkel firmly dismissed the longstanding accusation that she had systematically pushed aside male competitors throughout her career. When asked about the label of the "man-slaying Merkel", a term coined during her earlier power struggle with the now-Chancellor Friedrich Merz, she responded sharply.
"Men knock other men off course all the time. And when a woman does it, when she claims the path to a position the same way a man would, suddenly people talk about the 'man-slaying Merkel,'" she told Focus.
Merkel called the accusation "baseless" and "absurd," describing it as evidence that there had simply been no prior experience with women in such competitive political situations at the time. Anyone who aspires to high office must go through selection processes in which not everyone ends up satisfied, she added. It was only after she became Chancellor, Merkel reflected, that she realised being a woman within the CDU had been more difficult than being from the east of Germany.
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