Merkel ready to call time: A champion of real EU values

German chancellor Angela Merkel may not be a perfect political leader — does such a paradigm exist?— but she is the most powerful, the most important woman in Europe.

Her announcement yesterday that she would not seek re-election as party chairwoman and that her fourth term as chancellor would be her last signals the end of a 13-year period in which she dominated European politics — and very much for the better despite all the obvious caveats.