THEIL: You were a protegee of Kohl’s and worked with him for years. You didn’t know anything about the CDU’s secret accounts? MERKEL: No, I knew nothing. The circle of people who knew about these financial shenanigans was extremely small.
You’re the first woman to lead a major German party, and the first easterner. That’s a lot of change for a conservative party. The CDU had a major crisis. Surely my being a woman and coming from the new states is a symbol for the kind of all-round renewal that few people thought us capable of. It’s a good, fresh start.
You’ve said that coming from the east gives you a special perspective on the challenges Germany faces today. The slogan we used in the 1998 election was “Security instead of risk.” In my opinion, we should turn that around to “Risk instead of security.” The world is changing rapidly, and we have to have the courage to see change as something positive instead of being as frightened by change as many Germans still are today. In East Germany in 1989, we faced the necessity of total and radical change. Instead of letting ourselves be paralyzed by the risks, we decided to make the best of it, and it brought us a lot of good.
What kinds of changes? The globalization of the economy and financial markets affects all of Germany. If we keep everything the way it is, we shouldn’t be surprised if we drive people into the underground economy and our companies out of the country.
What exactly does the CDU stand for? Business leaders are praising Schroder for tackling reforms that were taboo under a supposedly business-friendly CDU. We’ll always place more trust in markets and competition than a social-democratic party ever would. The CDU stands for less government, less bureaucracy, less centralization, less hierarchy and more responsibility for individuals and local government.
The “C” in CDU stands for Christian. What does that mean in today’s Germany? I think the “C” stands for giving people a compass of values. We live in a world today where we can go anywhere we want via the Internet. Giving people a sense of their roots and values is something where a Christian viewpoint can be a great help. The “C” also stands for seeing that all humans have their failings, including politicians. I lived in a dictatorship where a group of people thought they were historically determined to rule over others. A Christian viewpoint rules that out.
Jurgen Ruttgers, the CDU candidate for governor in North Rhine-Westphalia, is running a populist campaign against Schroder’s decision to let in 20,000 foreign computer specialists. Is this the kind of campaigning we’ll see from the CDU under your leadership? I wouldn’t call his campaign populist. His slogan is “More education instead of more immigration.” He’s asking whether our children are training for the right professions. For the first time Germany faces a situation where we’re lacking a high number of skilled specialists, in part because young people are studying for the wrong jobs. There’s nothing wrong with Ruttgers’s pointing that out. At the same time, given our aging population and the development of the economy, of course we’ll have to take more foreign specialists into the country at some point.
You’ve said that under a CDU government, Germany would take a different attitude toward Brussels and the EU. Does Brussels really have to regulate everything, from how we fight fires to the local water supply? We also need a broader discussion about who should be in the EU. Pressing ahead with Turkey’s candidacy is wrong because it will produce disillusionment on the Turkish side and place too high a strain on the people in the EU.
This week a poll showed you beating Schroder if an election were held today. Will you be Germany’s first woman chancellor? If we want to win in 2002, we’ll have to prove we have the better ideas. Right now we’re not even thinking about who’ll be our candidate.
