Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she was 'tormented' by Brexit, calls it 'humiliating' for EU

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was “tormented” by the results of the Brexit referendum, calling it a “humiliation” for the European Union. The remarks from the German politician were featured in her 700-page autobiography, titled “Freedom.” In the book, which is scheduled to be published on Tuesday, the former German Chancellor said that she might have done more to help British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was keen to stay in the EU.

However, she went on to claim that Cameron only had himself to blame for the whole ordeal. Merkel, who left the office three years ago, said that she saw Brexit coming the moment Cameron asked Conservative MEPs to leave the European People’s Party. The Tory leaders eventually left the party over the parliamentary alliance’s backing of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.

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The treaty introduced numerous changes to the regional body, which many anti-European critics claimed to be “undemocratic.” According to the excerpt of the memoir obtained by The Guardian, Merkel recalled the negotiations she had with Cameron to keep the UK in the EU and insisted that she felt “deflated” when she saw the result of the referendum and the subsequent deal which was drawn out.

‘Brexit was a humiliation for EU’: Merkel

In her memoir, Merkel emphasised that Brexit was humiliating for the EU and claimed that the United Kingdom left the regional body in the lurch. “To me, the result felt like a humiliation, a disgrace for us, the other members of the European Union - the United Kingdom was leaving us in the lurch. This changed the European Union in the view of the world; we were weakened,” she said.

She insisted that she “tried wherever possible to help David Cameron”, despite risking the ire of other EU leaders who she claimed had already distanced themselves from him. “My support of him rendered me an outsider with my other colleagues … The impact of the euro crisis was still lingering, and I was also repeatedly accused of stinginess,” she added.

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She recalled the 2016 summit during which an agreement was expected to be reached over the UK’s renegotiation of demands to stay in the EU. “I steadfastly remained by David Cameron’s side for an entire evening. In this way, I was able to prevent his complete isolation in the council and eventually move the others to back down. I did this because I knew from various discussions with Cameron that where the domestic policy was concerned, he had no room for manoeuvre whatsoever,” she wrote.

The point where Merkel could no longer help Cameron

In the memoir, Merkel maintained that there came a time when she could not help the erstwhile British premier. She argued that the UK made a mistake after it did not impose restrictions on Eastern European workers once 10 new countries joined the bloc in May 2004. She claimed that the Labour government, which was in power at that time, “grossly underestimated” the number of people who would arrive in the country.

The influx of migrants eventually gave the EU sceptics the opportunity to put the body’s freedom of movement in a negative light. She pointed out how France and Germany introduced a gradual phase-in of Eastern Europeans’ rights to work, not giving them full access to their labour markets until 2011. She mentioned that Cameron’s pledge in 2005 for the Conservatives to leave the EPP was the initial nail in the coffin.

“He, therefore, from the very beginning, put himself in the hands of those who were sceptical about the European Union, and was never able to escape this dependency,” she writes. She went on to conclude that Brexit “demonstrated in textbook fashion the consequences that can arise when there’s a miscalculation from the very start”.

However, Merkel mentioned that she was pained by the idea that she couldn’t do enough for the UK to stay in the EU. “After the referendum, I was tormented by whether I should have made even more concessions toward the UK to make it possible for them to remain in the community,” she averred.

“I came to the conclusion that, in the face of the political developments taking place at the time within the country, there wouldn’t have been any reasonable way of my preventing the UK’s path out of the European Union as an outsider. Even with the best political will, mistakes of the past could not be undone,” the former German Chancellor added.