Reuters Praise for Angela Merkel's tough negotiating skills in forcing through a deal on European budget rules has given way to warnings that the chancellor risks using up her political credit among Germans. Britain's rejection of last week's agreement, backed by the EU's other 26 leaders, gave Merkel respite from foreign media caricatures casting her as a Kaiser or Fuehrer intent on dominating Europe. But she won only fleeting relief, as US magazine Newsweek brought out a cover warning: “Achtung! It's Angela!” While mainland Europe looks aghast at Britain's growing euroscepticism, polls suggest Germans are growing weary of the euro zone and are less impressed by their chancellor's crisis management than post-summit headlines first suggested. Even her allies warned Merkel not to assume easy passage of decisions taken at the summit, such as handing over some budget sovereignty to Brussels and moving up the launch of the euro zone's permanent bailout mechanism by a year, to mid-2012. “The Bundestag (parliament's lower house) will study whether constitutional problems could arise from the EU Commission or a European currency commissar intervening directly in national budgets and parliament's control of the budget,” said Bundestag speaker Norbert Lammert. In a country whose Constitutional Court subjects such things to close scrutiny, Lammert called it “very ambitious” to expect parliament to approve the new bailout fund, or European Stability Mechanism (ESM), fast enough to bring it into effect a whole year ahead of schedule. Always focused on domestic politics, especially with 2013 national elections approaching, Merkel knew she would win points for sticking to her guns on the independence of the European Central Bank (ECB) and rejecting jointly-issued euro zone bonds. “When politicians do what they said they would, it's always good for their credibility, which is what happened here,” said Joachim Koschnicke of pollsters Forsa. __
