Politics & Power Quote by Angela Merkel

Merkel’s language is the sound of power refusing to perform certainty. “On the one hand” isn’t a throwaway throat-clear; it’s a governing technique. It signals that the problem is real, the stakes are high, and no one is getting the emotional release of a promise. The blandness is strategic: by describing a “financial projection” as merely “on the agenda,” she pulls heat out of what is, in European terms, combustible material - budgets, burden-sharing, credibility with markets, and domestic voters watching for giveaways.

The pivot to “we will see if this problem can be resolved or not” is classic Merkelian conditionality. It smuggles in a warning: resolution depends on others behaving, and Germany will not underwrite ambiguity without discipline. There’s also a subtle redistribution of responsibility. “We will see” makes outcomes feel like a collective discovery rather than a decision imposed by Berlin, even when Berlin’s preferences are the gravitational center.

Her call for a “special summit” sounds procedural, but it’s a move to elevate the conversation from haggling over numbers to arguing about hierarchy - “priorities of European politics.” That’s the real battlefield. In the EU, priorities determine which countries get flexibility, which policies get funded, and which crises are treated as existential. Merkel is effectively saying: stop improvising crisis-to-crisis; create a framework where hard trade-offs can be legitimized.

Contextually, this sits inside the EU’s recurring cycle of fiscal disputes and emergency meetings, where the summit is both theater and tool. Merkel’s intent is to buy time, set terms, and force an argument about what Europe is for - without ever sounding like she’s the one demanding it.