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Politico (14 October 2021)

BY DAVID M. HERSZENHORN AND MAÏA DE LA BAUME

In an unlucky span of 13 days, Europe’s predominant political family — the European People’s Party — saw its most seasoned leader, Angela Merkel, walk into the sunset and its brightest new star, Sebastian Kurz of Austria, crash to Earth.

With Merkel not running for another term, her Christian Democratic Union fell to a defeat in the September 26 federal election — the latest in a string of setbacks — that means the European alliance of center-right and conservative parties will almost certainly soon lose control of its biggest prize, the German government.

The party of EU founding fathers such as Schuman, De Gasperi and Adenauer — and more recently of Berlusconi, Sarkozy and Van Rompuy — has now entered what some party leaders are calling its worst spell in the political desert that any of them can remember.

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