Do we like them?

Do we like Angela Merkel?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent on the right side of the big human calls, with a no vote on marriage equality and a patchy Russia and climate record.

Merkel was born in Hamburg but grew up in East Germany, and she came to politics after the Berlin Wall fell. She went on to lead Germany for 16 years from 2005, the first woman in the job. Her style was calm, cautious and unflashy, which is a big part of why Germany and Europe leaned on her through one crisis after another.

The defining moment was 2015. Her government let over a million people fleeing Syria and elsewhere into Germany, and she brushed off her famous line about coping as a banal statement about getting past obstacles. Critics say it helped the far-right AfD rise. The UN refugee agency gave her its Nansen Award in 2022, and its chief praised her moral and political courage.

On LGBTQ+ rights it's a mixed bag, and you should know it. In 2017 she let her conservative bloc vote by conscience on same-sex marriage, and parliament passed it 393 to 226. She herself voted no, saying she read German law as defining marriage as between a man and a woman, though she said she'd come around to same-sex couples adopting.

The harm check on the planet and on Russia is patchier. She said she put a lot of energy into climate protection, but she also defended the nuclear phase-out and leaned on gas as a bridge fuel. Critics say that left Germany dependent on Russian gas. She still defends keeping contact with Russia, Nord Stream 2 and blocking Ukraine's NATO path in 2008, while critics argue she was too soft on Putin.

She's also stood up to her own side. In January 2025 she broke her usual silence to criticise Friedrich Merz for pushing migration proposals through parliament with far-right AfD support. She said it was wrong to abandon his earlier promise not to rely on those votes. Merz replied that a correct decision does not become wrong because the wrong people approve it.

The honours are real ones. Germany gave her its highest civil honour in 2023, though some in her own party thought the timing was off. In 2026 the European Parliament ceremony drew a boycott by some MEPs, but a Euronews fact check found no evidence of planted applauders, as some claimed.