Burdened but unbowed, Merkel faces biggest test in tilt at fourth term

German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses a news conference, to announce that she will run again for the Chancellorship in the next year general elections, at the Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) headquarters in Berlin, Germany, November 20, 2016. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

BERLIN (Reuters) - Announcing on Sunday she will seek a fourth term in office, Germany's Angela Merkel faces perhaps the biggest test of her career: defending the European and transatlantic status quo amid huge uncertainty for both.

Already chancellor for 11 years, she must now anchor a western alliance shaken by Donald Trump's U.S. election victory, and bind together a European Union in which Germany has forged its post-war identity but which now risks breaking apart.