| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
IN GERMANY and outside it, the media spoke and wrote about the results of the German federal elections of September 22, 2013 as a personal triumph of Angela Merkel, the FRG Chancellor since 2005. Journalists hastened to tag her the "Chancellor of Europe." But was she really?
In 2009 and 2013, Angela Merkel led her party to federal elections under the slogan of a right-center coalition (which she personally preferred) with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) which had moved further right on economic issues. In 2009, the German burghers frightened to death by the global financial crisis and financial collapse of several of the Eurozone countries preferred not to change horses in midstream: they voted Merkel. The 2009 elections, however, are better described as a triumph of Free Democrats who showed the historically best 14.8%. Those who voted FDP believed that the "bourgeois-minded" parties are much better suited to look after the country's economy than the "spendthrift" left. The FDP even promised lower taxes on businesses and natural persons.
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