Merkel
slams eastern Europeans on migration
Chancellor
makes emotional plea in closed-door meeting.
By FLORIAN EDER AND
MAÏA DE LA BAUME 10/7/15, 3:53 PM CET Updated 10/7/15, 7:11 PM CET
STRASBOURG —
German Chancellor Angela Merkel harshly criticized eastern European
governments for not having learned from their own history in their
responses to the migration crisis.
“The eastern
Europeans — and I’m counting myself as an eastern European — we
have experienced that isolation doesn’t help,” she told members
of the center-right European People’s Party Wednesday in a
closed-door meeting, according to a recording of the session obtained
by POLITICO.
“It makes me a bit
sad that precisely those who can consider themselves lucky that they
have lived to see the end of the Cold War, now think that one can
completely stay out of certain developments of globalization,”
Merkel said, referring to the reluctance of some EU countries to
accept refugees.
“It just strikes
me as somehow very weird. And that’s why we have to keep talking
about that, as friends,” Merkel said, speaking German, as she
responded to a question from a Czech MEP on the refugee crisis.
“A rejection [of
taking refugees in] as a matter of principle, that is — excuse me
for being that blunt — that’s a danger for Europe,” Merkel
said.
The German
chancellor was emotional in the session, according to the recording
and sources in the room. She met with the party group ahead of her
joint public appearance with French President François Hollande in
Parliament,
The comments come
after a turbulent month for Merkel and for the EU over the migration
issue, with leaders criticizing her seemingly back-and-forth approach
to allowing refugees to enter Germany. Eastern European countries
have strongly opposed her policies, and have argued that the EU needs
to be tougher in protecting its borders.
Merkel’s demeanor
in public is disciplined and reserved, verging on anodyne. But in
private, she is known to speak frankly and display a cutting wit.
That edge was apparent in Wednesday’s meeting, where she showed a
bluntness on the crisis that hasn’t come through publicly in recent
weeks.
‘This is not
Europe’
Less than an hour
later, the German chancellor gave a more measured assessment of the
crisis in her remarks to the full Parliament. She called for EU
countries to work together to better control borders and start to
address the root of the problem in the war-torn Mideast .
“We need more
Europe,” Merkel said in her speech. “We need, more than ever
before, the coherence and cohesion that we have shown in the past.”
In the party
meeting, Merkel was especially tough on European countries that have
portrayed the acceptance of refugees as a threat to religion. “When
someone says: ‘This is not my Europe, I won’t accept Muslims….’
Then I have to say, this is not negotiable.”
European leaders,
she said, would lose their credibility if they distinguished between
Muslim and Christian refugees. “Who are we to defend Christians
around the world if we say we won’t accept a Muslim or a mosque in
our country. That won’t do.”
Merkel has provoked
a backlash at home and from other EU countries to her approach to
migration, first deciding to open Germany’s borders to
asylum-seekers, and then shifting gear and imposing stricter
controls.
“Yes, we have
helped Hungary,” she said in the meeting. “I’m also being
criticized for that in Germany. We have helped Hungary because we
have thought that one had to save Europe’s dignity.”
Merkel lashed out at
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, also for
reasons related to Germany’s and her own history. Closing the
borders completely would not work, she said: “The refugees won’t
be stopped if we just build fences. That I’m deeply convinced of,
and I’ve lived behind a fence for long enough,” she said.
“Maybe you can
delay it for a couple of years. But even the GDR wall fell, and it
fell 25 years ago, and we were all very happy. It just couldn’t be
maintained. And so Europe won’t be able to transform into a
fortress. It won’t work.”
Specter of Brexit
During the meeting
Merkel also said EU leaders should be open to considering important
treaty changes if they want the Union to “evolve.”
According to MEPs
and officials, Merkel also said during the meeting that the EU
treaties should be changed “if necessary” to deal with important
issues.
While the discussion
focused mainly on the migration crisis facing the EU, the chancellor
acknowledged that such treaty changes would be difficult to achieve
given the recent history of the EU.
The sources said the
mention of possible EU reforms requiring a treaty change came in
response to a question from an MEP. They were general in nature and
not related to any specific topic, such as the coming British
referendum on membership of the Union.
U.K. Prime Minister
David Cameron has said that he will push for serious EU reforms in a
variety of areas, including policies allowing the free movement of
labor and people throughout the Union.
According to several
MEPs who attended the meeting, Merkel’s 30-minute discussion
touched on a variety of topics besides migration, including
negotiations on an EU-U.S. trade agreement, and economic policies.
Merkel’s
presentation “showed that changes can be necessary in the EU,”
said German MEP Andreas Schwab, “particularly on asylum policies.”
A group of German
politicians from her Christian Democratic Union party wrote to Merkel
this week to protest her “politics of open borders,” saying they
“neither correspond to the European or German law nor does it
correspond to the program of the CDU.”
Hans von der
Burchard contributed to this article.
Authors:
Florian Eder and
Maïa de La Baume
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