Bruised Merkel returns home to more policy fights - Straits Times

BERLIN (REUTERS) - Chancellor Angela Merkel returns from one of her most difficult foreign trips in recent memory on Tuesday to face more, severe tests of her long-standing command over the policy agenda in Germany and Europe.

The chancellor looked unusually isolated at a weekend G-8 meeting in Camp David, where new French President Francois Hollande teamed up with host President Barack Obama to push back against the bitter austerity medicine Ms Merkel has prescribed for reeling euro zone members.

That conflict will continue to haunt her this week at an informal summit of European Union (EU) leaders on Wednesday and at a meeting with German opposition leaders the following day, where she must defuse an escalating row that could delay approval of her cherished 'fiscal compact' on budget discipline.

The man that Ms Merkel was relying on to push these new fiscal rules through parliament, her chief whip Mr Peter Altmaier, was abruptly shifted to the post of environment minister last week and will now have his hands full getting Ms Merkel's stalled energy transformation plan back on track.