The CDU is a big player in the European parliament, but its predicted win this Sunday won\u2019t change Germany\u2019s inward focus<\/p>\n
What a difference four years makes. In 2021, the world watched the German elections<\/a> to see who would succeed the EU\u2019s uncrowned \u201cqueen\u201d. Angela Merkel had become a symbol of liberal democracy in the era marked by the first Trump administration. In Germany, two colourless figures explicitly vied to replace her. Deep down everyone knew that German leadership in Europe was coming to an end. But no one could have foreseen how steep the fall would be.<\/p>\n Today, Germany is a country struggling with itself, increasingly sidelined in Europe and the world. The second Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 largely destroyed Merkel\u2019s rosy legacy, exposing her opportunistically soft approach<\/a> to authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n. Under Merkel\u2019s Social Democratic party (SPD) successor, Olaf Scholz, the country has become as pale and uninspiring as the chancellor himself.<\/p>\n Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today<\/a><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The CDU is a big player in the European parliament, but its predicted win this Sunday won\u2019t change Germany\u2019s inward focus What a difference four years makes. In 2021, the world watched the German elections to see who would succeed the EU\u2019s uncrowned \u201cqueen\u201d. Angela Merkel had become a symbol of liberal democracy in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}