ANGELA MERKEL - ONE MORE YEAR “ THE MOST POWERFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD”

Every year, Forbes draws up a list of the most influential female leaders from across the globe, in six categories: business, technology, finance, media & entertainment, politics & policy, and philanthropy.

For one more year, Forbes magazine has crowned German Chancellor Angela Merkel the Forbes' most powerful woman in the world.

Merkel topped the Forbes’ list of “ The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women in the World” for a record thirteen years in a row, including 2019, since 2006, with a brief exception in 2010 when she was replaced by then the First Lady of the U.S, Michelle Obama.

This year she is followed by Christine Lagard and Nancy Pelosi, the two also influential women of the world’s politics.

The publication praised Merkel for her “steely reserve”, for standing up for US President Donald Trump and her “open door” to allowing more than a million Syrian refugees into Germany.

She served as the leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 2000 to 2018.

She is a German politician serving as chancellor of Germany since 2005. She will leave the office in 2021 as she announced last year that she would not seek reelection as chancellor. This would make her the longest-serving elected female head of government in the European Union.

Nevertheless, she remains the “de facto” leader of the European Union and leader of the free world.

“The Atlantic” described her in 2019 as "the world's most successful living politician, on the basis of both achievement and longevity" while the Harvard University President Larry Bacow described her as "one of the most widely admired and broadly influential statespeople of our time".

Also, she was found to be the most respected world leader internationally in a 2018 survey.