Scholz: Germany’s responsibility for Europe

Chancellor Olaf Scholz sees Germany in a leadership role in the EU. “We are very aware of the consequences of our decision for a geopolitical European Union,” Scholz wrote in an op-ed for the German newsletter Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, referring to the turning point in time after the Russian attack on Ukraine. “The European Union is the lived antithesis of imperialism and autocracy,” he added. The EU must therefore become a “geopolitical EU” – and based on that, Germany will assume responsibility for Europe and in the world. “To lead can only mean to bring together, in both senses of the word,” the SPD politician stressed, however. This means working out solutions together with others and refraining from going it alone. “And so, as a country in the middle of Europe, as a country that was on both sides of the Iron Curtain, we bring together East and West, North and South of Europe.”