Merkel, ‘Conservative’?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/18/opinion/merkel-conservative.html

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To the Editor:

Re “As NATO leaders gather, rifts over Russia deepen” (News, July 9-10): Angela Merkel is certainly more experienced on Russian issues, and political thinking, than any British prime minister since she spent the first 36 years of her life in East Germany.

Once again, Ms. Merkel’s party is called “conservative,” which even by European standards is absurd. “Social market economy” has been a main principle of the German Christian Democrats since 1949. In 2007 it was written into the text of the Treaty on European Union. Conservative? The wording was also accepted (although reluctantly) by the French Socialists, most of whom are now center-left.

NORBERT PRILL

Strasbourg, France