[ad_1]
When politics meets reality, then there is a civil dialogue. So far it’s not necessarily one of the Chancellor’s strengths, and the crown-related digital format doesn’t make it any easier. How did Merkel do when she spoke to the apprentices?
By Corinna Emundts, tagesschau.de
Just when the Chancellor is actually in the digitally broadcast video dialogue with 18 trainees and their coaches, the mood threatens to change. A Berchtesgaden hotel owner gives insight into her desperate plight and specifically asks, “Can we open again on December 1?” You must know that, in the hotel without guests, you no longer know what to do with your nine apprentices.
The pressure that many companies are under due to Corona’s restrictions extends to the Foreign Ministry via the Internet. Angela Merkel sits there in a modern orange chair, next to her only the presenter, and thinks about it.
What should I say now? Should I admit that politicians don’t know if hotels can reopen early next month? That her and the Prime Minister’s announcement to shut down parts of public life for four weeks was only preliminary, and that the infection process must be observed before this specific question can be answered?
Take a breath and dodge
Merkel takes a deep breath and simply says, “We all have to be sensible.” She notably evades the answer and turns to Merkel’s comments, as we now know from her most recent press conferences and government statements: It is crucial that the number of new infections is reduced to 50 infections per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days.
But the Bavarian instructor adds in a voice that still sounds urgent: “We have to open, that’s really bad for us.” Merkel’s response: “I know you are particularly affected; encourage everyone else to give up unnecessary contacts.” Then you can do it. When, she doesn’t say.
The first of four digital citizen dialogues
It is the first of four digital citizen dialogues that the Foreign Ministry now offers in the Corona crisis, a kind of live experiment: politics meets reality. Merkel had justified it very personally at first. In his work this year he is “very strange that he cannot meet so many people.” After all, she doesn’t want to be quarantined all the time.
But behind the personal words is also the government’s understanding that there is more to explain, in pandemic conditions. After all, people’s freedoms are temporarily severely restricted, to a degree never seen before in the history of the Federal Republic.
Accessible and oriented
Merkel is accessible and expensive, not so easy in the digital format. She listens and asks. Sometimes so intense that the moderator struggles towards the end to accommodate all the questions in the planned hour and a half. For a few minutes, he spoke with a trainee about his disappointment that many of the company’s rejections of his applications contained no reason.
“I think it’s a bit unfair if you don’t get any suggestions for improvement, don’t you think?” The young woman asks the Chancellor through the screen. “I guess you couldn’t have done any better,” she replies, almost like a mother. Presumably, companies were in Corona stress with short-term work or other special problems. It will be a one-on-one personal conversation, as is often the case in these 90 minutes of digital dialogue.
It certainly would have been better, says Merkel in the direction of the screen, the companies would at least have described it to her, “so you don’t have to look at yourself to blame yourself.” That shows how important what you get in response is so that you don’t stay home feeling depressed. The young woman nods, apparently feeling understood. There is no comparison to the stiff and clumsy Merkel of 2015, who at the time brought 14-year-old refugee girl Reem to tears with a relentless response during a citizen dialogue.
Merkel also teased the Wiesbaden “apprentice of the month” this lunchtime with questions about her everyday life. The young man came from Afghanistan five years ago. At some point, Merkel wanted to know if she sometimes cooks for her German friends. No, that’s not his thing, he replies. “In Germany, men also have to cook,” jokes Merkel after being enthusiastic about the language she had acquired in such a short time for minutes.
Merkel understands
The dialogue becomes a panopticon of Merkel’s main problems in recent years, beyond Corona. Be it immigration policy, be it climate protection. “What do you give our generation that it will have to take the lead in Germany at some point?” Asks an 18-year-old technical product design trainee. Taking the pandemic as a warning to be prepared for natural disasters, says Merkel. And to understand not to use more land than we can regenerate: “We have to find a good relationship with nature.”
“I get it,” he often says of youth concerns, asking some if training on the computer at home rather than at the company doesn’t make them feel lonely in Crown times. It doesn’t seem fake. Merkel.
