Chancellor Angela Merkel is running for a fourth term in 2017

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel is in charge of the EU’s largest economy. She’s also in for the fight of her life, and not just for her job.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced she will seek a fourth term next year.

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced she will seek a fourth term next year, ending months of speculation.

Predicting her toughest campaign to date, the 62-year-old leader has made it her mission to defend democratic principles amid the rise of Donald Trump and similar far-right leaders across Europe.

“I have today told the board of my party that I am ready at the party congress in Essen, on December 6, to again be a candidate for the head of the Christian Democratic Party,” she told reporters in a press conference.

“And, as I understand it, you can’t separate that from being a candidate for Chancellor of Germany in the federal elections in 2017.

“I thought this for an endlessly long time. The decision for a fourth term is — after 11 years in office — anything but trivial for the country, the party and for me personally.”

Ms Merkel says this will be her most challenging run for Germany’s top job yet.

Ms Merkel said she had a “duty to serve my country”, acknowledging this would be her most challenging run for Germany’s top job yet.

“We are facing struggles in Europe and internationally for our values and our interests and, simply put, for our way of life,” she said.

“This election will be more difficult than any before it, at least not since national reunification.”

Another full four-year mandate, which pollsters say she is likely to win, would tie the post-war record set by her mentor Helmut Kohl, who presided over the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

But if we’ve learnt anything from Brexit or the success of US president-elect Donald Trump, it’s that polls can’t necessarily be trusted.

MERKEL’S ROLE IN A CHANGING WORLD

Ms Merkel has led the Christian Democratic Party and served as Germany’s Chancellor for the past 11 years.

She was responsible for steering her country through the financial crisis and the euro zone debt crisis. She’s also been a strong advocate of efforts to combat climate change, and was responsible for the crucial decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants following the meltdowns at Fukushima in 2011.

Critics say Ms Merkel represents a force of “stability” in a world where unpredictable events have transcended opinion polls and pundits’ predictions.

This is especially important as Britain wrestles with the fallout from the Brexit vote, and the globe braces for potentially radical changes under the leadership of US president-elect Donald Trump.

With the surprising election of Donald Trump in the US, Ms Merkel represents a force of “stability” in the world.

But Ms Merkel has rejected commentators’ description of her as the last representative of “Western liberalism” — of liberty, social equality and democracy — telling reporters this is a “grotesque, even almost absurd” concept.

“No human being on his own, even if there’s a lots of experience, can manage to give the world a positive direction for everything, not even a German Chancellor,” she said.

Under more than a decade of her leadership, Germany enjoys relatively low unemployment, a solid financial position and a respectable growth rate.

But despite this, Ms Merkel’s controversial decision to open the country’s borders to over one million asylum seekers over the past two years has dented the leader’s popularity.

Far-right leaders are propping up all over Europe, following in Donald Trump’s footsteps by railing against globalisation, immigration and political correctness.

France, for example, is facing a presidential poll in May that sees far-right candidate Marine Le Pen likely to take victory.

The controversial politician, who has publicly supported Mr Trump since well before the election result, was the only major political leader in France to call for Britain to leave the European Union, the results of which she later hailed as a “signal of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world”.

She’s called for a similar movement by France, which has been called ‘Frexit’.

Similar figures are gaining traction across Poland, Hungary and Denmark.

“Trump-esque” far-right figures like Marine Le Pen are gaining prominence all over Europe.

In Germany, Ms Merkel is likely to face a tough battle against the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

Support for the anti-immigration party has risen significantly rose following the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne last year.

Making heavy use of campaign slogans lke “Secure the borders”, “Rape Refugees Not Welcome” and “Stop the asylum chaos”, the party has struck a clear chord with a number of the country’s population who have grown disaffected with immigration.

As of September, the party has gained representation in 10 of the 16 German state parliaments.

But according to Manfred Guellner, the head of the Forsa polling agency, nearly 60 per cent of Germans wanted Merkel to run for office again.

“In these difficult times, Merkel is a pillar of stability,” Guellner told The Associated Press news agency. “People have the feeling she represents German interests well abroad.”

Britain’s exit from the European Union will be a key issue for whoever is elected to lead Germany next year.

Whoever next leads Germany will face a number of unresolved diplomatic challenges, including relations with Russia, the Syrian crisis and consequential influx of asylum seekers, autocratic developments in Turkey and negotiations over Brexit.

Ms Merkel ultimately hopes to be a unifying figure in all this.

“We together wish to argue like Democrats, that means arguing not (to) hate, not (to) degrade somebody, not (to) ostracize somebody, exclude somebody,” Merkel told reporters.

“I understand in politics that it’s our mission as the state to try to solve problems for citizens, to give a framework where people can shape their lives.

“My mission is to listen to citizens and then in the interests of our community to implement policies.”

— with wires