On June 16, 1940, Winston Churchill proposed a Franco British political union in the aftermath of the German invasion of France. A decade later, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer proposed a Franco German political union.

Chancellor Vice Chancellor

Still, German Chancellor Angela Merkel can be proud of what was achieved. It is her first real success in international diplomacy.

The German Chancellor and the Foreign Minister have recently announced a road map for the timely implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.

Chancellor?

The only contemporary European who can lay claim to the mantle of greatness is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the European Union s de facto leader. Like former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, she tends to be underestimated at first, but gets the big decisions right.

I have a big problem when a third state interferes in our energy supply, Dieter Kempf, head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) said following a recent meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As German automakers face scrutiny, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has also been accused of coddling the powerful car companies and of ignoring signs of the problem.

The late editor of the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, Rudolf Augstein, who never liked former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, titled his commentary about German reunification Congratulations, Chancellor! For Merkel, Sunday s election has opened a door, especially with respect to overcoming the euro crisis and to deepening European integration.

That's the chancellor.

The German Chancellor has been lucky. The falling gas price and Germany s high profits will finance the tax increase, which should prove little more than a speed bump for the German economy, at least if lower gas prices hold into the coming year.

Others see no connection between stimulus and renewed economic dynamism. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently put it, Europe needs political courage and creativity rather than billions of euros.

Angela Merkel was recently reelected for a third term as German Chancellor Britain s voters elected Margaret Thatcher three times as Prime Minister and France has had a female prime minister.

The second key figure was West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who rushed into the opened breach, overriding his Allies caution, while the third actor was the East German people, who rushed into the streets, regardless of the risks, to demonstrate and push reunification forward.

The Chancellor of Justice

Send for the chancellor!

The key reason is that several recent reforms announced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel raising the value added tax, increasing user charges for healthcare, and taxing interest payments as a part of so called corporate tax reform promise to reduce German economic growth, perhaps significantly, in 2007.

In 2000, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder wanted to issue work visas to about 20,000 foreign high tech experts, many of them from India. Germany needed them badly, but Schröder met swift opposition.

Mr. Martin Hirvoja, Deputy Chancellor

We must not abandon the core tenets of European civilization, including the obligation to shelter refugees from evil. German Chancellor Angela Merkel s instinctive reaction to the influx should still be applauded, not condemned.

One should simply have asked the Swabian housewife, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. She would have told us that you cannot live beyond your means.

Indeed, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will face a serious dilemma following her likely re election. Without strict conditionality, she would risk shifting the domestic consensus in favor of Germany s emerging Euro skeptic mood.

The Chancellor Who Played with Fire

The lord chancellor accepted my application.

Cameron s bid to thwart Juncker s candidacy mirrored his unsuccessful attempt to prevent the adoption of the EU s fiscal compact in 2012. He overestimated German Chancellor Angela Merkel s willingness and ability to support the British position.

Should Germany spurn the first part of this formula, the European project would suffer serious damage and so will German national interests. Yet this is the direction in which Chancellor Merkel seems to be heading.

The irony is that Germany s anxieties about price stability, which underlie the EU s embrace of austerity, are entirely misplaced German inflation could scarcely be lower. With German unemployment, too, hitting record lows, while joblessness hits record highs in Italy and remains at obscene levels in Greece and Spain, what has emerged is a two tier Europe, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel s government calling the shots.

Risto Ihamuotila (Finland), Chancellor, University of Helsinki

Whole societies can also try to improve their happiness. British Prime Minister David Cameron introduced the measurement of happiness into national statistics, and more recently German Chancellor Angela Merkel launched a program to promote citizen s wellbeing.

Europe s international role is shrinking, with the old G 5 having evolved into the G 20. And, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel setting conditions for the eurozone, France s ambition to dominate European policy has been thwarted.

A number of leaders, most prominently German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are understandably worried about the longer term consequences of aggressive macroeconomic stimulus. These concerns are valid, even more so given government s growing role in the economy.

Then there is Germany, which holds the key to the integrity and unity of the eurozone. So far, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been largely successful in insulating the German economy from the turmoil elsewhere in Europe.

LONDON The recent European Union summit was a disaster. Both Britain and Germany played the wrong game British Prime Minister David Cameron isolated Britain from Europe, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel isolated the eurozone from reality.

In the first case, the result will be economic chaos. There will be a falling out between the new populist government and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (and the ECB), creating high uncertainty about what comes next.

As one of the German contributions to this programme, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder committed additional assistance funds which will lead to investment in renewable energies and energy efficiency of 500 million euros over the next five years.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just visited Beijing, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy likely to follow soon. Both are surely aware that China s surging exports last year helped it surpass the US as Europe s largest foreign supplier.

But these developments have not come about as part of a strategy. Had there been no crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other national leaders in the EU would never have been prepared to take these steps.

The key point of contention, however, is the pan European Financial Transactions Tax, which the European Commission proposed with support from both Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. From a UK perspective, the FTT is highly unattractive.

One sign of hope is that, following the recent Franco German summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the first time did not publicly oppose the idea of a European economic government. Spelling out such a body s structure, costs, decision making procedures, and control mechanisms as quickly as possible is now the order of the day.

He or she heads an office, not a full fledged organization. This weakness is what forced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to bully her European Union partners into a more coherent response to the ongoing influx of asylum seekers.

Nor will she abandon special relations with Russia, to which every German chancellor since Adenauer has attached major importance. But she has already made clear that Germany s neighbors to the East will have no reason not feel bypassed.

An axis between Paris, Berlin, and Moscow never really made sense even when Schroeder was in power in Germany. It is even more absurd today, with Angela Merkel someone who is without illusions about Russia as German Chancellor.

You give a German alias to a German. And what kind of German?

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel now have the opportunity to rise to the occasion as European statesmen. Since Tsipras s election in January, German officials have barely been able to contain their fury that a left wing upstart government of a tiny, bankrupt country would dare to challenge one of the world s great economies.

At such a politically sensitive moment, a German victory could have sparked a bitter nationalist reaction in southern Europe. Instead, encouraged by his country s victory, Italy s new technocratic prime minister, Mario Monti, in alliance with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for easier access to ESM support and scored another major victory for his country.