German Chancellor Angela Merkel has silenced sceptics who had questioned her readiness for high office in a forceful first month that has seen her broker an EU budget deal and coolly pass a series of foreign policy tests.

Tougher challenges lie ahead. The 51-year-old conservative from the former communist east will ultimately be judged on whether she can stimulate a creaking economy and create jobs, while holding together a fragile coalition with her chief political rivals.

But because of her early successes abroad and steady hand at home, Merkel’s approval ratings have shot to new highs and analysts say she is now in a stronger position to assert her authority.

Pollster Manfred Guellner compares her with the man who led West Germany out of the post-war rubble: “It’s remarkable how strongly she has started. You have to go back to Konrad Adenauer to find anything like it.”

Merkel became Germany’s first woman chancellor on November 22, after her conservatives only just edged out Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democrats (SPD) in an election she had been expected to win easily.

The tight result forced her to enter coalition talks with the SPD — which had openly questioned her fitness to be chancellor during a bitter campaign, making much of her dowdiness and lack of obvious charisma compared to Schroeder.

She steered those talks to a successful conclusion but entered office a weakened figure, with a watered-down economic agenda, atop a government that most Germans did not expect to last a full four-year term.

Her rebound over the past month has been dramatic in speed and scope.

In her first weeks as chancellor, Merkel worked furiously to lay the groundwork for an EU budget deal, meeting over half a dozen European leaders. That paid off on Saturday with a deal that had eluded Schroeder and other European leaders in June.

Merkel not only won credit for her mediation between France and Britain, but was widely seen to have boosted Germany’s influence by taking on a role of honest broker after years of lopsidedly France-friendly policies from Schroeder.

“What we saw in Brussels was a change in German style as well as substance,” said Charles Grant, director of the London-based Centre for European Reform. “Because of the crucial role Merkel played there, she will be perceived as a real leader at home and that can only help her domestic agenda.”

Merkel has also won praise for deft handling of two sensitive foreign policy challenges — the kidnapping of the German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff in Iraq, and the mistaken CIA abduction and detention of another German, Khaled el-Masri.

In a poll this week, 71 percent of respondents saw Merkel as competent, figures Schroeder never attained in his seven years in office.

That has included reaching out to her SPD coalition partners, for decades the only other ‘party of power’ who, like her conservatives, will have an eye on grabbing pole position for themselves at the next election.

More individual successes for Merkel could harden resistance within the SPD, which will be loath to see her rise at their expense.

Her coalition has said cutting unemployment is its main priority, but Merkel and the SPD are divided over how to reach that goal and strains are already evident. Fights are also brewing on healthcare and how to handle terrorism suspects.

“Merkel’s probation period has been focused on foreign not domestic policy issues,” said Gerd Langguth, a political scientist at Bonn University and biographer of Merkel. “Ultimately she will be measured on her ability to cut unemployment.” — Reuters