German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the European Union must push ahead with deepening integration next year if the bloc is to have meaningful influence on the global stage, her clearest backing yet for a reform drive championed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Merkel said she wanted talks to form another coalition government with the Social Democrats to be concluded quickly so that Germany can help France to propel EU reforms forward before the process is interrupted by European elections in 2019.
Europe is the best vehicle “if the EU member states want to have any influence at all over geopolitical developments,” Merkel told a news conference in Berlin on Monday after a meeting of her party leadership. “I believe that is a historical necessity and I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say the world is waiting for us to be able to act.”
How Macron and Merkel are working in private to rebuild Europe
The drive to seize the narrow window for EU reform is likely to be a key point of contention in the coalition talks due to begin on Wednesday between Merkel and Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz. Schulz has aligned the SPD fully behind Macron’s initiatives to strengthen the EU, including calls for a euro-area budget and an EU finance minister, while many in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union-led bloc are wary of further integration, seeing it as code for German financial support for what they regard as fiscally spendthrift governments.
