Thorsten Benner

Fears about Ger­man in­sta­bil­i­ty are overblown. A tran­si­tion to a post-Merkel Ger­many might not be bad news for Eu­rope.

Af­ter Sun­day’s elec­tion, it’s time to bury any il­lu­sions about Merkel’s sup­posed role as ‘the leader of the free world’.

The pur­pose of the Ger­man chan­cel­lor’s trip to Egypt and Tunisia is to help to re­duce ir­reg­u­lar mi­gra­tion into the EU.

The right-wing AfD is to stay, and will con­strain Merkel’s lead­er­ship – but less so than in neigh­bour­ing EU coun­tries.