Andrew Stuttaford writes for National Review Online about a former German leader’s lingering impact on European life.
The reckless, arrogant and narcissistic decision by Angela Merkel, Germany’s second-worst chancellor, to throw open her country’s doors in 2015 was one of the series of acts that led The Economist to describe her that year as “the indispensable European.” Thanks to the freedom of movement within the EU that is one of the bloc’s most important principles (and which was reinforced by the removal of inter-EU border controls by countries that had signed up to the Schengen Agreement), Merkel’s unilateral decision ensured that many other EU countries, perhaps most notably Sweden, would see an influx too.
The political consequences were quick to make themselves felt, and they raised an awkward question. If Merkel was an “indispensable” European, what would a dispensable one look like? To start with, while Brits voted for Brexit for a wide range of reasons, it’s almost certain that alarm over what was going on in Germany helped tip the electorate over into opting, by a relatively narrow margin, for Brexit. The “indispensable” European had helped demonstrate to those voters that the EU must be dispensed with. As a result, the EU lost one of its largest member-states. …
… Lisa Haseldine, writing in The Spectator:
A decade later, that gleaming foundational principle of the EU – the freedom to move between member states uninhibited – has been put on hold, perhaps indefinitely. Nine EU countries – Poland, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany – have temporary border controls in operation. …
… While the E.U. was never a bastion of free speech, it at least liked to pretend that freedom of expression was a “European Value.” However, panicked by the rising popular discontent brought about by the Merkel surge and what followed, the EU, and, for that matter, the U.K. too, have given up on that pretense, and over the last ten years have been engaged in narrowing the limits of “acceptable” free speech, particularly, but, not only, online.
The post Merkel’s lasting negative impact on Europe first appeared on John Locke Foundation.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Mitch Kokai
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.johnlocke.org and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
