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PARIS - The world's top table has a new figure: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is busily shaping the European Union's agenda, cultivating a friendship with United States President George W. Bush and telling Russian President Vladimir Putin to mind his manners.
Merkel took over the EU presidency on January 1 as the bloc expanded from 25 to 27 members, just as she took the helm of the Group of Eight (G8) countries.
Both have given the 52-year-old Chancellor the chance to stride the world's stage - and she is putting on a show that is surprising many in Europe with its snap and confidence.
In a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday, Merkel stood defiantly by a controversial plan to overhaul the EU's institutions.
Merkel threw her country's weight behind the charter, even though many consider the scheme dead. It has already been rejected by France and the Netherlands and would be defeated in Britain if put to the vote today.
Merkel said she would push for consensus by July on what to do with the troubled project and set the goal of "early 2009" for settling the outcome of that debate.
Without an agreement on an EU constitution, the half-billion people of Europe face decision-making gridlock, she warned.
"Failure would be a historic mistake," Merkel said sternly. "The rules that we have today are such that with them, the European Union cannot enlarge further and indeed struggles to function as it is. We need to overcome this situation and ... we need a clearer demarcation of the functions of Europe and the member states."
After her speech, Merkel jetted to Berlin where she had scheduled a briefing from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who chose Germany for her first stop after a six-country tour of the Middle East.
In a trip to Washington this month, Merkel pledged to beef up transatlantic ties in Nato and lobbied the US to cut its greenhouse gases.
She found a responsive ear in Bush, clearly at ease with a conservative German leader after Gerhard Schroeder, a Social Democrat, whose opposition to the Iraq war left the two men barely on speaking terms.
On Russia, Merkel has broken the cosy ties Schroeder had with Putin.
"At last!" wrote Germany's top business daily, Handelsblatt, in tribute to Merkel. "The Chancellor is adopting a new tone towards the Kremlin and it sounds rather like a liberation."
Merkel's rise to the top has surprised many. Dumpy and mousy-haired, described by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl as "the girl", Merkel took office only 14 months ago at the helm of a left-right coalition that seemed doomed to early collapse.
But good judgment and good luck have been with her. Against the odds, Germany's first female Chancellor - and its first from the former Communist east of the country - has pushed through a painful reform programme.
The country once derided as "the sick man of Europe" had annual growth of 2.5 per cent last year, the highest in six years; its public deficit was slashed by a third; unemployment, 11.7 per cent in 2005, fell to 10.8 per cent; and its trade surplus was the highest since unification in 1990.
This has left Merkel as the only strong leader in the "Big Four" European countries, just as Bush enters the twilight years of his presidency, his power crimped by the Democrats' control over Congress. In Britain and France, Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac are lame ducks, while Italian premier Romano Prodi is struggling with a fractious coalition about domestic reforms.
"Europe is begging for leadership. And Merkel looks like the only one who can provide it," said Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform, a London thinktank.
Despite this, Barysch said, Merkel's star turn was laden with the risks of her highly ambitious EU agenda and the potential for squabbles within her coalition.
TOUGH TALK
Fear of failure
German Chancellor Angela Merkel took over the European Union presidency on January 1. She has warned Europe it faces a "historic failure" if it does not revive the deadlocked European constitution.
World view
Merkel also committed herself to progress on energy security and climate change, a global trade deal, a new partnership agreement with Russia, and greater peace efforts for the Middle East.
Courting US
She has also pushed closer co-operation with the United States, including freer trade, saying it was "in the highest interests of Europe".
