Angela Merkel Retires from Politics

“I will no longer be involved in politics,” outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during an interview with Deutsche Welle. “I won’t be a troubleshooter for political conflicts. I’ve done that for many years, 16 years as federal chancellor,” she added, according to Politico.eu.

Merkel said her immediate plan after leaving office is to sleep and read. “It’s simply the case that I was, for many years, very much preoccupied with the agenda that was set for me and I always had to be on standby. You have to do that as head of government, if something happens, so that you can always respond to it immediately. Now I’m going to look at what I’d like to do by choice. But that will become clear only in a few months from now.”

The outgoing chancellor said that one of her most challenging moments came in 2015, when Germany saw a major influx of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. She said at the time “we can do it”, opening the country’s borders to asylum seekers. “Yes, we did it,” Merkel said in the Deutsche Welle interview, but acknowledged that “not everything went exactly as it should.”