He is not losing his power, but Schröder will. Merkel grew up and lived in the communist GDR. I´m hopeful that she will understand the needs of the smaller East European countries better than Schröder did, who just thought of his axis Paris-Berlin-Moscow. Germany under Kohl had a role as a mediator between the big and small states in Europe and as a mediator between the US/UK on the one hand, and France on the other. We need to get back to this, it served our interests as biggest central European state at best.