Merkel’s report card: Grading Germany’s EU presidency

Germany labeled its six-month presidency of the Council of the EU with the slogan “Together for Europe’s recovery.” And indeed, as Berlin hands the EU leadership baton to Portugal at the end of this week, many say its biggest achievement was to keep the bloc united during a historic crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic not only posed an unprecedented challenge for Europe’s health care systems and economies, it also significantly slowed down policy work in Brussels as meetings had to be canceled or turned virtual, making it harder to negotiate directly and clinch deals.

For German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government, this meant scaling back some of the presidency’s priorities, such as reaching a political agreement on a new migration and asylum pact, or launching broader reform talks under the auspices of the Conference on the Future of the EU (which were also delayed by disagreement about who should chair that conference).

Still, many EU officials and diplomats said they could not imagine how the EU would have managed if any other country or national leader had been in charge during the second half of this annus horribilis. Notably, Germany delivered in crucial areas like climate targets plus the budget and recovery fund package, while avoiding a split with Hungary and Poland over the issue of rule of law.

Here’s how POLITICO has graded the Germany Council presidency:

Budget and recovery fund

Together with French President Emmanuel Macron, Merkel has been the main driver behind efforts to combine the EU’s €1 trillion budget for the next seven years with a €750 billion recovery fund to ensure that not only rich Northern countries have the financial capabilities to cushion the economic fallout of the pandemic. Despite great differences, EU leaders managed to clinch a deal at a five-day marathon summit in July, thanks to crucial steering from Merkel.

However, some details, including a mechanism to make EU funds conditional on respect for the rule of law were left unresolved. This led to more budget drama in December, when Hungary and Poland threatened to veto the budget and recovery fund as they were not happy with the mechanism. Brussels responded by drawing up alternative plans that would have excluded the two countries from the EU’s recovery scheme, but Merkel ultimately managed to reach a compromise that maintained EU unity, while keeping the rule of law clause intact (though critics say it should have been tougher).

On a sidenote, Berlin also launched a “peer review” process, under which EU ministers analyze the rule-of-law situation in five EU countries every six months in order to counter criticism that the EU is only looking at the situation in Hungary and Poland.

Grade: A

Migration and enlargement

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had set the highly ambitious goal of reaching a broad political agreement on a new migration and asylum pact that the European Commission presented in late September. But with Council meetings of EU ministers shifting back to videoconference in October, it quickly became clear that it would be impossible to reach the required political momentum for a deal on migration. Disappointment was limited, however, as most officials had low expectations that significant progress could be made within such a short timeframe.

More frustrating to EU officials was Berlin’s failure to deliver its key presidency goal to launch EU accession talks with North Macedonia. Merkel had pushed to start enlargement negotiations during the German presidency, but was let down by her fellow center-right leader, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, who imposed his veto because of a dispute over history and language.

Grade: C–

Foreign policy and trade

Most of the EU’s foreign-policy agenda during the past six months has been dominated by the brutal crackdown on civil protests in Belarus, as well as escalating tensions with Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean. To the great frustration of Berlin, Brussels and elsewhere, the topics became linked after Cyprus demanded that the EU could only impose sanctions against Belarus if it also agrees on a tougher approach toward Turkey. This led to an embarrassing delay of EU sanctions on Minsk, which were announced in August but could only be implemented in October.

Concerning Turkey, Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas failed to convince President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to move toward a more cooperative approach. In December, Germany grudgingly conceded to pressure from other EU countries to proceed with sanctions against Ankara. Berlin also made diplomatic efforts to stabilize Libya, while a planned EU-Africa summit had to be postponed due to the pandemic.

On the trade front, the picture is more positive: Merkel has been strongly involved in securing an investment deal with China, which was concluded on the penultimate day of the presidency, and Berlin also closely assisted the Commission in its talks on a post-Brexit trade deal that got done just before Christmas.

The German presidency was also efficient in finalizing talks on boosting the EU’s trade defense powers, which allow Brussels to retaliate against the U.S. or China in absence of functioning dispute settlement at the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, another initial priority project of the Germans, the ratification of the EU-Mercosur trade deal, was put on the back-burner as doubts about Brazil’s commitment to fight against deforestation continued to grow.

Grade: B

Health care

Berlin shepherded in substantial new integration of European health care policy — a move toward a “health NATO” as Health Minister Jens Spahn put it — as the coronavirus showed the pitfalls of a patchwork pandemic response. Germany pushed a somewhat hesitant Commission to propose new authority and resources for the European Medicines Agency and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

On a global level, Berlin led a push to make the EU top dog at the World Health Organization as the U.S. receded, coordinating a joint position on reforming the U.N. health agency.

The presidency also hammered out compromise language on the thorniest section of a long-stalled Commission proposal to assess the value of new medicines at the EU level. Proposed in early 2018 and backed by the Parliament later that year, the so-called health technology assessment file has been mired in the Council — in large part due to Germany’s opposition. Broadly, the tighter link-up of health policies could only have happened during a German presidency, when Berlin prioritized being a neutral-but-consequential broker over its normal posture as a cautious stonewaller.

Grade: A

Energy, climate and sustainability

The German presidency managed to bring countries together for Council conclusions on a future EU hydrogen market — though the compromise was criticized for stretching too far to accommodate hydrogen made from fossil fuels, rather than sticking to the kind made from renewable electricity. It also garnered praise from environmentalists for obtaining a bloc-wide agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030 and promote cross-border renewable energy projects — but got slammed for embracing natural gas as a transition fuel and allowing Europe’s land use and forests to count toward the emissions reductions.

On the sustainability front, the presidency succeeded in adopting conclusions on the new Circular Economy Action Plan and secured the adoption of conclusions endorsing the 2030 EU Biodiversity Strategy. But it failed to start negotiations on the EU’s 8th Environment Action Program — the bloc’s guidebook for implementing the Green Deal over the next decade.

Grade: B

Agriculture

German Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner pushed for an agreement between EU countries on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, pledging to put an end to negotiations that had dragged on since 2018. She delivered on that promise, brokering a late-night deal in October that allowed the Council to enter talks with the European Parliament. However, some of the compromises were criticized as turning back the clock on the EU’s environmental pledges.

Germany also made animal welfare a priority in its time at the helm, and secured conclusions this month that call for the Commission to create a new EU-wide animal welfare label for food produced with standards higher than those in EU legislation.

Grade: B

Transport

German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer made a big splash by announcing plans to revive a joint European railway network — a new Trans-Europe Express — but his ambitions quickly ran out of steam. Scheuer wasn’t more successful with his “New Mobility Approach,” a response to the Commission’s Green Deal that is supposed to make the transport sector more sustainable and boost digital transformation, such as autonomous driving. The minister got smashed in Council by his colleagues, with Luxembourg’s transport minister saying this month that the German proposal would need “substantial improvements.”

Scheuer had a bittersweet success as EU countries agreed on a reform of road charging rules, called Eurovignette — ironic as the Bavarian politician last year spectacularly failed to implement such a road toll in Germany.

Grade: D

Technology

Many of the EU’s ambitious new tech policy initiatives only landed towards the end of 2020, limiting the role Berlin could realistically play in shaping those proposals. Nevertheless, it was still a fairly unspectacular showing on the tech policy front for the German presidency.

Germany became the latest in a long line of EU governments to try and fail to reach a deal on the e-Privacy Regulation in the Council. Berlin spent much of its six-month term in a tug-of-war over the proposal between its economy and justice ministries — eventually won by the latter’s more pro-civil-rights stance. Then, when the proposal was finally put on the negotiation table in the EU Council, it failed to garner enough support from other governments.

The German presidency also failed to agree with the European Parliament on a common text for an interim e-Privacy Regulation, which would grant platforms a derogation to fight against child sexual abuse online. Consolation for the presidency came in the form of an agreement between negotiators from the EU institutions that would require social media platforms to delete terror content within an hour. The German government also spearheaded a renewed push for law enforcement agencies to get “lawful access” to encrypted communications. 

Grade: C

Final grade

All in all, weighing Berlin’s achievements against the gigantic challenges of the pandemic and also considering its success in keeping the EU together and coordinating coronavirus-related health measures, Germany’s Council presidency gets a …

Total: B+

Gut gemacht!

Sarah Wheaton, Eddy Wax, Joshua Posaner, Jakob Hanke, America Hernandez, Louise Guillot, Bjarke Smith-Meyer and Vincent Manancourt contributed reporting.

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