Angela’s medal

So, they gave Angela another medal. That’s the Angela who led Germany as chancellor from 2005 to 2021, and who has received a bevy of awards over the years. The latest accolade the long-serving chancellor received was a new European Parliament award created to honour people it considers have done some service to the European Union. The European Order of Merit by the European Parliament was presented to Angela Merkel for her ‘contributions to European integration and sustainable energy policies’. Another noteworthy name on this newly invented honours list is our own Bono. 

Recognition merited

Presumably, the European Parliament award was in recognition of Angela Merkel’s government’s decision to close its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Japanese nuclear accident in 2011. In their place the German government negotiated with Russia to establish the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines to supply Germany with a reliable energy source in place of nuclear power. Quite how that stands up as meriting a this European Parliament award for her contributions to sustainable energy policies is not at all clear, given that nuclear power, for all its faults, is far more sustainable than fossil fuel. Let’s not forget the other issue of becoming increasingly dependent on its undependable eastern neighbour for a large portion of Germany’s energy needs. Let’s not forget, either, the invasion of Crimea in 2014, which seems to have been ignored by former Chancellor Merkel in continuing to pursue the total closure of Germany’s nuclear power plants up to her retirement in 2021. She was not to know, presumably, that Putin would invade Ukraine less than one year later. Other notable ‘successes’ delivered by Angela during her 16-year reign as German chancellor included overseeing a continuing decline in Germany’s economic figures. Productivity per German worker halved from 1.6 per cent annually between 1997 and 2007 to 0.8 per cent between 2012 and 2019. That kind of economic performance hardly merits a clap on the back from the European Parliament, though, in fairness, it was not for her German economy stewardship that she was honoured. 

Leadership

Angela Merkel’s memoirs will surely defend her actions in attempting to appease the Russian Bear, who already had seriously aggressive form before a second pipeline from the Russian gas fields was inaugurated in 2015, one year after the Crimean takeover, and completed in 2021. It’s not a great record of political shrewdness. In fact, it shows, at best, significant naivety in accepting peaceful assurances from the Russian leader even as his actions contradicted his public utterances. Someone with a complete fluency in the Russian language should surely have had a better appreciation of Russian expansionist ambitions. At the very least, one would expect that Angela Merkel would not have allowed her country to become increasingly dependent on Russia for its energy needs. Substituting fossil gas for nuclear energy to assuage public opinion, would not seem to deserve a European Order of Merit award for her sustainable energy policies. Our own refusal to exploit gas reserves off the south coast, instead depending on the having the last tap on the pipeline from the North Sea gas fields is equally questionable as fuel, fertiliser and electricity costs threaten our economic wellbeing. Irish food producers must hope for better political leadership than Angela Merkel provided for Germany.