Merkel shows steel in euro, German fight

Chancellor Angela Merkel's sacking of a former close ally was designed to show her leadership would not flag abroad at a critical juncture in the euro zone crisis or in Germany in the face of growing domestic problems, analysts said on Friday.

Merkel on Wednesday fired Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen, a powerful deputy leader of her Christian Democrats (CDU), the first time in her seven years as chancellor that she has dismissed a minister.

"She's demonstrating she won't tolerate any loss of authority whatsoever," said Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin's Free University. Merkel's rise in the CDU and then to chancellor in 2005 was marked by her ability to topple powerful male barons along the way, often quietly behind the scenes. Since taking the chancellery she has ruled with a collegiate style and only once had to ask a minister to resign, voluntarily.

But after Roettgen, 46, rebuffed her suggestion to step down as Environment Minister over his botched leadership in North Rhine-Westphalia - Germany's most-populous state, which her Christian Democrats lost in an election on Sunday - Merkel sacked him. "It was quite a surprise because that's not her style to fire someone like that," said Gerd Langguth, her biographer and a political scientist at Bonn University.

"She wanted to demonstrate leadership and to show everyone who's boss." German newspapers were filled on Friday with detailed accounts of how Roettgen first defied Merkel's repeated appeals to resign on Tuesday and Wednesday and then was surprised that she fired him publicly after a cabinet meeting.

Roettgen, who had ambitions to one day succeed 57-year-old Merkel as chancellor, was until Sunday the leader of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia. He resigned from that post after leading the CDU to its worst election result in the state, with just 26.3 percent of Sunday's vote. Despite having many enemies in the party and in German industry, Roettgen felt secure in his ministerial job, partly because of an unwritten rule that NRW is entitled to at least two of the eight CDU seats in Merkel's 16-seat cabinet.

He has not commented since his firing but some CDU leaders from NRW have criticised Merkel's actions. Roettgen had annoyed many other conservative leaders for hedging his bets before the NRW election. He refused to risk his cabinet post in Berlin and did not jump wholeheartedly into the election race in the battleground state.

"Merkel fired a likely heir apparent," wrote conservative Die Welt newspaper. "She has a sense that everything is at stake in Europe right now. She wants clarity. No one should have any doubts about her power whether on the Rhine River (in NRW), on the Seine (France) or at the Acropolis (Greece)." The usually well-informed conservative daily added that as much as Merkel nurtured the career of Roettgen as a bright young leader, she has zero tolerance for anyone or anything getting in her way to help guide Europe through the euro zone crisis.

"Merkel's fighting the fight of her life in Europe and there is no room for anyone showing selfishness," Die Welt wrote. Merkel also has a series of domestic political headaches, one brought about by Roettgen. The upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, unexpectedly overturned her government's poorly prepared renewable energy law with a two-thirds majority after several conservative-led states objected.

She is also facing disarray in her centre-right coalition over plans to introduce payments to parents who keep their pre-school children at home. Roettgen's sacking was a message to those who might stand up to her, analysts said. "Merkel wants to show people at home who's in charge," said Langguth. "Things are not going well for her domestically at the moment. She clearly wanted to demonstrate leadership."