European Union rebounds under Merkel-Macron duo
Shares
Speculations about the future of the European Union have been quite negative since the 2008 international financial crisis disproportionately affected some of Europe's weaker economies.
And pessimism spread after the UK voted to leave the EU last year amid increasing pressures from emboldened Putin's Russia to the East and from skeptical Trump's America to the West.
But the world's largest economic union has rebounded, at least psychologically, over the past several months as elections, notably in France, gave it a new momentum and vigour.
The same German-French partnerships that allowed the EU to become the largest economic market and union it is today promises to grow stronger under the duo of Merkel-Macron.
The more seasoned and more experienced Chancellor Merkel has emerged as the de facto leader of the union on economic, and also on strategic, environmental and humanitarian issues.
This week, as she hosts the G20 summit, the German Chancellor is more popular in her country and around the world than the US president. It's indeed paradoxical that the two great powers defeated in World War II, Germany and Japan, have emerged in the Trump era as the two most steady voices of the liberal world order.
Although she is seen as a voice of reason on new global challenges from environment to refugees, Merkel has also proven to be a calculating and, some would even say, "Merkevilian" politician able to successfully manoeuvre her way around the traps and pitfalls of European and world politics.
In that way, Merkel's power and influence is both enhanced and amplified by and through the EU, and is emerging as an attractive third choice, nicely positioned in the middle between Trump's America and Xi's China.
However, to its disadvantage, the administratively complicated and slow-functioning EU tends to take a back seat to American and Chinese leadership which enjoy greater capacity to deliberate and respond.
