Agency Report –
Germany needs to become the “driving force” in Europe, ABBA star Björn Ulvaeus said in an interview with Der Spiegel news magazine released on Saturday.
“Friedrich Merz is Europe’s hope at the moment,” he said in reference to the conservative leader set to be voted the next chancellor when the German parliament, or Bundestag, convenes on May 6 following elections.
Ulvaeus recalled the fears of his youth regarding the Soviet Union during the Cold War. “Russia is very close – on the Baltic Sea across the way,” he noted in response to a question whether he felt threatened.
“The feeling of being threatened was very real. And that’s the way it is now again,” he added.
Ulvaeus, who turns 80 on Friday, said that as a young man he had wondered what he would have done if Sweden, which was neutral at the time, had been occupied.
“Would I go into the resistance? Would I have the courage?” he said, adding that luckily he had never had to decide. “I could never have imagined living under the communist yoke,” he said.
He called for greater awareness of the dangers to freedom. “We have taken our freedoms for granted for too long. A world is emerging at the moment in which these freedoms are in question, a world in which autocracies are becoming possible again in Europe as well,” Ulvaeus said.
He pointed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, war in the Middle East and tensions with China over Taiwan.
Looking ahead to Germany’s incoming conservative-dominated government, Ulvaeus said many Europeans were looking to Germany to lead as the most important economic power.
By Jan Mies
