Angela Merkel considers fourth term as CDU has few alternatives

Agency

Long before Angela Merkel became chancellor in 2005, she already had her eye on the exit. Before German voters showed Helmut Kohl the door in 1998, she said that her mentor, who had been in power since 1982, risked overstaying his welcome.

“I would like to find the right point for getting out of politics,” said Merkel in an unusually frank interview with German photographer Herlinde Koelbl in 1997. “It is much more difficult than I imagined it earlier. But I don’t want to be a half-dead wreck.”

After three punishing, crisis-packed terms as chancellor, Merkel likes to brush off questions of her future plans with the promise of a decision “at the appropriate time”.

That time is now here. In four weeks’ time, CDU leaders and delegates hold their annual conference and, in an indication of just how much the CDU depends on its leader of 16 years, just one item dominates the agenda: will she or won’t she?

Merkel’s close allies say they don’t know for sure, but suggest that she will arrive at an answer using her usual method of breaking a big question into three smaller ones: am I physically up for it? Do I still have something to give? Does the job still stimulate me?