Arte stages Merkel’s last red carpet

ARTE – TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 AT 10.50 PM – DEBATE AND SPECIAL EVENING

If a channel had to be at the rendezvous of the German legislative elections of September 26, it had to be Arte. And that’s the case : on its site, the Franco-German channel offers a choice of quality content, some directly linked to the campaign and its issues, others devoted to the state in which Angela Merkel leaves the country, after sixteen years in power.

Arte made it simple and efficient. Three modules of five to six minutes each compare the programs of the different parties on taxation, climate and Europe. Three portraits of candidates for the Chancellery are presented, each in three minutes: Annalena Baerbock (Greens), Armin Laschet (CDU-CSU) and Olaf Scholz (SPD).

Under the “Voters’ portraits” tab, Arte.tv also went to meet citizens whose journey sheds light on some of the challenges facing German society today: poverty, which has not declined despite the strong economic growth of the “Merkel years” ; integration, in a country which has only 58 deputies of foreign origin (out of 709), whereas one inhabitant in four was not born with German nationality; sustainable development, illustrated here through the example of a pig farmer whose career represents the crisis of an ultra-productivist agricultural model that is increasingly called into question.

Sixteen years in power

The subject devoted to Angela Merkel’s “farewell” to Europe, and tonight’s debate, “The End of an Era: Angela Merkel, View of Europe”, are enlightening. Treaty of Lisbon, 2008 financial crisis, Greek crisis, terrorism, migrant crisis, Brexit, Covid-19 … Of all the current European leaders, the German Chancellor is the only one to have gone through all these major events that have brought the test the unity of the continent.

“As soon as she walks on the red carpet, that’s the moment when all the cameras are converging on a single point, because you know exactly where she’s going to stop and you know how she will say is important to set the tone for what will be discussed at the European summit that will follow ”, says Isabelle Brusselmans, head of the audiovisual service of the European Council. A testimony that allows us to understand why the result of the next German elections is so expected, so decisive it will be for the future of the Twenty-Seven.

It remains to be seen what role the country will play after the departure of the one who played it for sixteen years. The number of the “Dessous des cartes”, under the title “Germany: a power called Merkel? “, explains with the pedagogical clarity which characterizes this program the reasons why the German “power” is at a turning point in its history.

Internally, the rise of an extreme right, which has taken root above all in the former Communist Länder, highlights the unequal inequalities between East and West thirty years after reunification. At the international level, the questioning of a world order is forcing Germany to redefine its relations with its American ally, which is moving away, its Russian neighbor, which is becoming more threatening, and its Chinese partner, from whom Berlin is beginning to understand that it is not only a commercial El Dorado but the major geopolitical challenge of this beginning of the XXI^e century.