Too much local discretion, says the German leader. The message to his successor
He looked tired Angela Merkel when she went to Anne Will’s show on Ard on Sunday evening: the contagion data are very worrying, the vaccination campaign is slow, the governors of the Länder “have adopted a very lax interpretation” of the restrictions “and this does not it fills us with joy ”(which translated means: I am furious). At the beginning of March, the chancellor and the governors had decided on a series of measures to be taken based on the data of the infection and she thought that, as had always happened, there would be the usual discipline in the application of lockdowns, despite the reluctance. Today instead denounces “too much discretion” on the part of the governors, says that there is “an exponential growth” of the virus and that “the restrictions must be applied with great seriousness. Some do it, others don’t “.
Under the German federal system, regions have the final say on how to act against the pandemic, but Merkel is willing to “amend the Infection Protection Act” and centrally enforce what regions do not do locally. “I will not wait fourteen days”, that is the cadence that has been given up to now to evaluate what to do, “to see how it goes”. Since it’s election year, everyone has focused on the Chancellor’s direct attack on Armin Laschet, who heads the country’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, and who is also his successor at the helm of the CDU. According to Merkel, Laschet is not doing enough. He says he has the situation under control, but at the same time the governor of Bavaria, Markus Söder, said he agreed to a centralization of power at the federal level. Since yesterday many have said: Merkel prefers Söder to Laschet. We will live on these speculations for a long time to come, but for now what the chancellor says to Laschet and his party is: conquer it, the candidacy to become chancellor in my place.