Merkel’s
new normal
Whether
it’s refugees, VW or Afghanistan, the chancellor is losing her
teflon coating.
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG 10/1/15, 6:19 AM CET
BERLIN — Did
Angela Merkel’s chancellorship just reach its tipping point?
A few weeks ago,
such a question would have prompted quizzical stares, if not outright
opprobrium.
Until recently,
Merkel, who this fall marks her 10th anniversary as chancellor,
appeared to be at the height of her power. Even when confronted with
thorny political problems like Greece, she survived the fray with
little more than a scratch.
Then the refugee
crisis hit. At first, Merkel, along with the rest of Germany, basked
in the glow of the Willkommenskultur, as thousands of volunteers
pitched in to help the newcomers.
For once, Germany,
often caricatured as Europe’s scold, was seen to take the moral
high ground.
Then reality set it,
both at home and abroad.
With tens of
thousands refugees taking Merkel’s pronouncement to heart that
there was “no upper limit” to asylum in Germany, the chancellor
found herself on the defensive. Berlin’s sudden decision to
reinstate border controls dismayed its neighbors.
Local officials
across the country complained they didn’t have the resources to
deal with the influx. Meanwhile, conservatives in Merkel’s own
party called for the adoption of controversial measures like those
taken by Hungary to keep the refugees at bay.
Merkel’s critics
have turned her rallying cry — wir schaffen das, “we can do it”
— into a cynical retort to questions about how the crisis can be
managed.
But that was only
the beginning of Merkel’s problems. Since then, her government has
been hit by a string of setbacks, from the emissions scandal
engulfing Volkswagen, to her government’s mixed messages on
sanctions against Russia, to the fall
earlier this week of
Kunduz, the German army’s erstwhile stronghold in northern
Afghanistan.
The controversies
have dented Merkel’s personal approval ratings as well as those for
her right-of-center political bloc. For the first time in a year, the
Union — as her Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party
CSU are jointly known — dipped below 40 percent to 38.5 percent in
a poll by Insa and YouGov.
In short, Berlin is
taking heat on all fronts.
Real people
“This is the new
normal,” said Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe, a
Brussels-based think tank. “Germany is experiencing what happens
when you are a leader, when you are expected as a nation to take
responsibility.”
For Merkel, that
responsibility means showing the rest of Europe that she can deal
with multiple crises — from the migration to the euro crisis to the
Ukraine — at once.
“This is a big
litmus test,” Techau said. “How much capacity does the country
have to lead?”
A key piece of the
puzzle is the German economy. Germany has proved surprisingly
resilient in recent years. Despite the chronic malaise across much of
the rest of Europe, Germany’s economy has continued to power ahead.
The prosperity has
given Merkel broad political leeway across a range of issues. Her
government has accelerated its costly “energy transformation,” a
shift to renewable energy, and even introduced a controversial
minimum wage.
But now the economy
faces headwinds on multiple fronts, from the pressure on VW,
Germany’s largest carmaker, to the slowdown in China, a key market
for German exports.
German unemployment
is still the lowest it’s been in a generation, but the economic
storm clouds could change that.
Germany’s
political debate has already turned to how to pay for the 800,000 to
1 million refugees expected to arrive this year. At a time when
funding for key infrastructure, from schools to roads, has been
tight, the billions the government has earmarked to house and feed
the refugees could spark a backlash.
What’s more, most
of the refugees are likely to stay for the long term, requiring
further investment in housing, schools and administration.
Until this summer,
Merkel’s leadership was mainly viewed against the backdrop of
Europe’s debt crisis. The refugee crisis will change that.
“Grexit was a
virtual thing in newspapers,” said Ulrike Guérot, director of the
Berlin-based European Democracy Lab. “The refugees are here,
they’re people. It’s not an elitist question, it’s in the
middle of society.”
While the Left party
is calling for taxes on the rich and on companies to compensate for
the extra costs, the conservatives in Merkel’s coalition want to do
away with the minimum wage.
Unlike with Greece,
where Merkel’s views were largely in sync with those of her party
and society at large, she has staked out a much more progressive
position on refugees.
Now in her third
term, she may be betting she has little to lose after presiding over
one of the most prosperous periods in Germany since the war. A common
criticism of Merkel’s leadership is that she is too cautious and
unwilling to confront the public with hard truths.
Though initially
slow to react to the refugee crisis, she has since seized the
initiative. Abandoning her persona as Germany’s pragmatic,
dispassionate leader, Merkel, daughter of a Lutheran pastor, appealed
to Germans’ moral instincts.
“What she’s
saying is, ‘you are either with me or against me,’” Guérot
said. “If it turns sour, it will be because she wanted a moral
Germany and Germans didn’t.”
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
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