The
Lonely Chancellor: Merkel Under Fire as Refugee Crisis Worsens
Until
recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was considered to be the
most powerful politician in Europe. But now, her approach to the
refugee crisis has her under fire at home and in Brussels. Can she
survive? By SPIEGEL Staff
November 02, 2015 –
06:58 PM / DER PIEGEL
For almost three
quarters of an hour, it was as though there was no refugee crisis in
Germany. Last Monday, Angela Merkel was in Nuremberg for a town hall
discussion with a specially chosen group of conservative voters. A
moderator in a light-colored, summer suit directed the proceedings as
Merkel chatted about everything "that is important to us."
Initially, the focus
was on those things that used to be important to Germans -- up until
roughly eight weeks ago. Things like vocational education, the
country's school system and the difficulty German companies have in
competing with companies like Google and Apple.
It was like a trip
back in time -- back to Germany's recent past, when the country was
happier and untroubled. But then Christine Bruchmann, a local
business leader, abruptly steered the discussion back to the issue
that has dominated Germany in recent weeks. Bruchmann wanted to know
if Merkel was concerned that the huge numbers of refugees currently
arriving in the country could disrupt societal balance.
The German
chancellor took a deep breath before launching into a sober analysis
of the job she has done in the past two months. Unfortunately, her
conclusion was not particularly rosy.
She knows, Merkel
said, that there still isn't European agreement on how to share the
refugee burden; that there is still no deal with Turkey on slowing
the inflow of migrants into Europe; and that along the Balkan Route,
used by hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis in
recent weeks in their quest to seek asylum in Germany and other
northern European countries, there is a lack of "order" and
"control." In particular, Merkel said, she is concerned
about that "which makes Germany so strong," namely "the
societal center." She is constantly asking herself, Merkel
related, "if we are losing the center."
One of Merkel's
great strengths is an unerring sense for political reality. As such,
her comments at the town meeting early last week show that nobody
knows better than Germany's chancellor just how precarious the
situation in the country has become. The influx of refugees continues
unabated and Merkel's public approval ratings continue to fall in
lockstep with sinking support for her center-right Christian
Democrats (CDU). Meanwhile, her quarrel with Horst Seehofer, head of
the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's Bavarian sister party,
has reached a new and dangerous level. Seehofer has issued so many
ultimatums to the chancellor that he will eventually be forced to
make good on one of his threats -- which could throw Merkel's
suddenly wobbly governing coalition completely off kilter.
'The End of the
Merkel Era'
The government, in
short, has lost control. And Germany is in a state of emergency.
Merkel can still
rely on a large number of supporters within her own party. But each
day that thousands of refugees cross into Germany, the certainty that
such support is sustainable erodes a bit further. Not long ago,
Merkel was considered the strongest political leader in Europe, one
whose term in office could only come to an end were she to decide
herself against running for reelection in 2017. Now, both foreign and
domestic media outlets are wondering aloud whether she will run into
serious trouble before Christmas, or shortly thereafter. "The
end of the Merkel era is within sight," the Financial Times
wrote a week ago.
Merkel's historic
decision to open Germany's borders to refugees stuck in Hungary was
morally unassailable. But politically, it has put her on the
defensive. Now, in order to tighten up Europe's external borders, she
is dependent on the help of erstwhile opponents such as Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Alexis
Tsipras.
In the EU,
meanwhile, her maxim that Europe should not get back into the
business of building border fences is being openly questioned.
Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, for example,
announced last week that her country was being forced to build
additional security facilities because the "inflow" from
Slovenia was larger than the "outflow" into Germany.
There is no shortage
of schadenfreude these days when European politicians speak about the
German chancellor. The true ruler of Europe, who forced her austerity
policies upon the entire Continent, must now come begging for help in
dealing with the refugee crisis, people in Brussels are saying.
Indeed, it is slowly
becoming apparent that Merkel's influence in the EU is waning just as
her support evaporates back home in Germany. To be sure, the
chancellor's stock has risen in recent weeks among Green Party
supporters and left-wing Social Democrats. But her own core of
center-right voters is fearful that the "refugees welcome"
movement could give rise to a parallel society of Muslims in the
country.
A Shot in the Arm
for the Populists
The situation is not
dissimilar to the fate of her predecessor Gerhard Schröder. In the
early 2000s, the Social Democratic chancellor pushed through welfare
cuts and reduced unemployment benefits that severely alienated many
in his party. The result was a reanimated Left Party, the far-left
political movement that partially grew out of the former East German
communist party.
This time, leading
German politicians have warned, Merkel's asylum policies could
provide a shot in the arm to the country's right-wing populists. One
member of her government warns that her stance on migrants is an "aid
program for the AfD," a reference to the anti-immigration party
Alternative for Germany. The party, which received 4.7 percent of the
vote in Germany's last general election, is currently polling at 8
percent, according to a survey released on Saturday.
CDU members say that
Merkel's only option for freeing herself from the trap in which she
currently finds herself is that of rapidly reducing the number of
immigrants arriving in Germany. But it doesn't currently look as
though that is a realistic possibility. Some 500,000 refugees have
entered the country since the beginning of September, and there is no
end in sight. "Prepare for the eventuality that in the coming
weeks, 10,000 to 12,000 refugees will arrive at the border each day,"
a member of the Coordinating Committee inside of Germany's Interior
Ministry said last Wednesday, quoting from a communiqué from the
Austrian Interior Ministry.
The situation at
Germany's borders has indeed become dramatic. Last week, for example,
Austrian authorities brought over 7,000 refugees to the German border
and simply unloaded them there at 3:30 a.m. One day later, Emily
Haber, state secretary in Germany's Interior Ministry, said: "We
have to prevent a repeat of such chaotic scenes at the German
border." She then added: "That was a clear violation of the
agreements."
One exhausted aid
worker spoke of a "humanitarian catastrophe." And SPD
parliamentarian Christian Flisek from the German border city of
Passau said: "We are transforming our border areas into the
country's refugee camp. It can't continue indefinitely."
The mood isn't just
becoming critical at the border. In late October, 215 mayors in the
state of North Rhine-Westphalia wrote a letter to Chancellor Merkel
and to the state's governor, Hannelore Kraft, saying that their
ability to cope with the situation had been exhausted. Almost all
available shelters were full to overflowing, they wrote, and even
providing people shelter in tents or containers was hardly possible
anymore. Furthermore, the municipalities are so busy with managing
the inflow of refugees "that we are unable, or only partially
able, to fulfill our other municipal responsibilities," they
wrote in the letter. At almost exactly the same time, five municipal
politicians from another region in the state sent an additional
letter of protest to Governor Kraft's office.
'Great Difficulty'
There is indeed much
that is no longer working. The federal government has still not made
the 40,000 emergency beds available that it promised back in
September during an emergency summit at the Chancellery. Furthermore,
underage migrants are often put on trains unaccompanied and sent
across the country. And it still often takes more than six months
before refugees can even file their applications for asylum.
Jörg Warncke, mayor
of the municipality of Lachendorf in Lower Saxony, groans. His city
hall has exactly 32 employees and, until recently, only one of them
was responsible for welfare cases, low-income medical care cases and
asylum-seekers. Now, Warncke has diverted sufficient funds from the
budget to hire a second case worker and has also charged the
municipality's IT expert, in addition to two employees who had been
responsible for kindergartens, with finding possible refugee
shelters.
"We are
managing the situation only with great difficulty," Warncke
says. He says he has been unable to find someone in the area who
speaks Arabic and that they only have one translator for Turkish and
one for Kurdish. "At the beginning, we could hardly communicate
with the people. Luckily, some of the first refugees who came to us
have managed to learn a bit of German and can help out as
interpreters."
The chancellor is
fully aware of the difficulties encountered on the local level and
she knows about the lack of sufficient shelters, of interpreters and
of judges who can make decisions on individual asylum cases. But she
doesn't have a solution for quickly easing the mounting pressures.
And one reason for that is that Merkel, long renowned for keeping her
cards close to her chest, has been unprecedentedly explicit about
where she stands on the refugee crisis. Essentially, she views the
crisis through the prism of two questions: Can Germany reduce the
number of arriving refugees by way of national legislation? And:
Should the government say that there is a limit to Germany's
capacity? She has clearly and explicitly answered both questions in
the negative.
Merkel believes it
is impossible for Germany to seal off its borders. For her, the
erection of a fence would not just be ineffectual, but would also
represent the end of the European ideal. Having grown up in communist
East Germany, she is from a country that cut itself off with walls
and barbed wire -- and she doesn't want to relive the experience. She
views all other proposals that have been made as mere political
posturing.
Unshakable Optimist
That also explains
why she has stubbornly avoided establishing a maximum number of
refugees that Germany can accept, as her nominal political ally Horst
Seehofer has repeatedly demanded. How high, after all, should such a
maximum be? And how can it be enforced? Merkel doesn't believe that
there is a satisfactory answer to such questions. It may be that
Germans want her to establish a limit to the burden Germany can
accept. But it would be politically dangerous for Merkel to identify
a maximum that couldn't be adhered to. That is her view of the
situation.
It would be
inaccurate to say that Merkel is alone in her view of the situation.
Chancellery Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier has long been among her
closest confidants and he unconditionally supports her position on
the refugee crisis. Indeed, she recently named Altmaier as her
refugee coordinator.
Chancellery Chief of
Staff Peter Altmaier remains a staunch supporter of Merkel's refugee
policies.
To be sure, the list
of potential candidates for the job wasn't long. Christian Democrat
éminence grise Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's finance minister, has
clearly articulated his skepticism in recent weeks and Interior
Minister Thomas de Maizière is closer to Seehofer on the refugee
issue than he is to Merkel. But Altmaier was a natural choice for
other reasons as well. For one, he shares Merkel's faith that, even
as the pressure is intense, the chancellor will be able to resist it
for much longer than critics believe -- perhaps even long enough to
create an EU distribution system and reach an agreement with Turkey,
even if neither of them believe that such moves would rapidly reduce
the numbers of refugees.
For another, though,
Altmaier is an unshakable optimist and studiously avoids the kind of
alarmism many in his party propagate -- largely because he has long
had a different approach to the issue of immigration than most others
in his party. At the end of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's term in
office, Altmaier -- who was a young CDU parliamentarian at the time
-- joined with a handful of other young conservatives in an effort to
change the party's approach to immigration. At the time, it was a
viewpoint that placed him and Merkel at the fringes of the party.
Things have changed since then, but the party is still largely
mistrustful of immigration and fearful that German culture could be
overwhelmed. Altmaier has no understanding for such worries.
As a result, he
defines Germany's refugee capacity differently than do most CDU
members. Germany, he is convinced, is a rich country and can find a
solution to the logistical problem it is facing and can integrate
even more refugees. Of course, the numbers of new arrivals will
change the country, but that doesn't scare Altmaier in the slightest.
It is possible, of
course, that Altmaier overestimates Germans, but he is right when he
points out that his fellow countrymen are not unmoved by the fate of
the refugees. "The incidents this spring clearly showed that
Europe cannot tolerate seeing people in need drowning," he said.
Unmovable
Still, Altmaier
knows, as does Merkel, that they can't simply ignore the building
pressure and the growing skepticism of her political path -- which is
why they are open to finding a compromise with the CSU, such as
entering into negotiations with the SPD over so-called transit-zones.
The idea is that of establishing zones on the margins of Europe where
refugees can be sheltered and asylum requests can be processed before
approved asylum applicants are distributed throughout Europe. Neither
Merkel nor Altmaier believe such negotiations will amount to much,
but they are eager to show that they are willing to seek middle
ground.
Things are moving
elsewhere as well. The Chancellery, for example, agrees with the
Interior Minister's proposal of sending back rejected asylum-seekers
from Afghanistan. A Chancellery source said that the extension of
Germany's military engagement in Afghanistan could be used to
establish safe zones, allowing for the return of asylum seekers.
Another issue of
dispute among German conservatives is that of allowing refugees to
send for their families once they have received asylum status. And
that problem could ultimately be resolved by the mere passage of
time. At the moment, for example, there are so many asylum
applications outstanding that the number of applications for family
reunification remains low.
Still, despite the
concessions Merkel has thus far made, she remains unmovable when it
comes to her central convictions. She refuses to define a maximum
number of refugees that Germany can accept and she refuses to
consider the construction of a border fence.
As such, Seehofer
isn't likely to back down. His quibbles, after all, aren't with
certain elements of Merkel's refugee policy. He disagrees with her
approach in its entirety and insists that Berlin place a cap on the
number of people the country can take in.
He also faces
tremendous pressure in his home-state of Bavaria. Located on the
border with Austria, the state has borne the brunt of the refugee
crisis and for weeks, mayors, municipal politicians and volunteers
have been complaining that they have reached their limit. The
atmosphere within the CSU's state parliamentary fraction has become
pre-revolutionary. Seehofer cannot afford the kind of equanimity that
characterizes Altmaier.
Under Attack from an
Ally
Instead, he has
spent the past several weeks launching attack after attack against
Merkel. He has said, for example, that Merkel's decision to take in
the refugees trapped in Hungary is a choice "that will occupy us
for quite some time to come." And he invited Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán, who built a fence on his country's southern
border to keep the refugees out, to a party event in Bavaria.
Bavarian State
Premier Horst Seehofer (right) invited Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orbán (left) to speak in Bavaria in September, thumbing his
nose at Chancellor Merkel.
Seehofer, though, is
himself skeptical of proposals to build a border fence and he isn't
interested in changing German asylum policies. "Everybody knows
that there isn't a lever to stop the flow of refugees," says one
member of the CSU leadership. "But you have to give the people
the feeling that you are interested in achieving that goal."
Merkel is concerned
about losing support should she be unable to live up to promises she
has made. Seehofer is convinced that voters will turn their backs on
the conservatives if they get the feeling that their worries aren't
being taken seriously. But Seehofer also didn't believe that Merkel
would remain so stubborn in her refusal to set an upper limit, which
partially explains why he allowed the quarrel to escalate. At the
beginning of October, he threatened "emergency defense"
measures should Merkel not change course.
A few days ago, a
new implicit threat emerged when Seehofer declined to deny reports
that the CSU could pull its ministers out of Merkel's government. The
CSU currently holds three seats on Merkel's cabinet. And he has also
opened yet another new front recently in the battle against Merkel.
If Berlin continues to refuse establishing an upper limit, Seehofer
said, his party may file a complaint with Germany's Constitutional
Court.
The fierce battle
between Merkel's CDU and Seehofer's CSU is harmful to both sides.
While the CDU's public approval ratings have fallen, so too have
those of the CSU. The party now stands at 43 percent, roughly 5
percentage points fewer than when Bavarian voters last went to the
polls two years ago. And for the CSU, winning the absolute majority
in state elections is really the only thing that counts.
Unleashing a Genie
That's also one of
the reasons Seehofer is putting up such a desperate fight, though at
this point, he would likely be satisfied with even just a small
gesture. "The words upper limit don't necessarily have to be
uttered," says a person close to the party boss. "Merkel
could also say that she will do all she can to ensure that the influx
doesn't continue the way it has."
But it's unlikely
Merkel will even agree to that -- raising the possibility that
Seehofer has unleashed a genie that he will no longer be able to
shove back into the bottle. The longer Merkel ignores the CSU's
increasingly insistent demands, the greater the possibility that the
Bavarian party will lose credibility. To avoid that eventuality,
Seehofer will ultimately have to follow up his bluster with action.
Within the CSU's
party group in the national parliament in Berlin, the mood is getting
increasingly rebellious. "If we have nothing but vague plans for
transit zones, then the disaster will take its course," warns
the group's justice affairs coordinator, Hans-Peter Uhl. He says that
Germany is so overstrained from the influx of refugees that it is
self-evident the government must be prepared to turn people away
directly at the border "always based on the principle of
proportionality." He says he plans to move forward with other
domestic policy specialists to submit a petition to Merkel's
government calling for it to take more decisive action.
But what happens if
Merkel doesn't yield? Bavaria, after all, cannot simply close its
borders.
"The chancellor
cannot just single handedly dictate the path. Instead we need to work
together and agree on how the course is set politically," said
Hans-Peter-Friedrich, deputy head of the joint parliamentary group of
the CSU and Merkel's CDU. "Anything else would be in violation
of the agreement governing our group," he says, adding that
nobody wants to revoke these working agreements. But the former
German interior minister also quietly conveyed the threat of doing
just that. "In terms of Seehofer, I consider anything to be
conceivable at the moment," says one member of the CDU's
national party executive.
Leftist Policies?
Trouble is also
brewing within Merkel's own party. On Wednesday night, a county
chapter of Merkel's party held a town hall meeting focused on the
issue of refugees at an inn in the town of Bopfingen in the southern
state of Baden-Württemberg, a heartland of CDU voters. Some 50
residents met in a back room with three CDU politicians. The mood was
far from positive.
Thomas Trautwein,
the head of the city chapter of the party, accused the chancellor of
having sent a welcoming message around the entire world. "It's
no longer possible to bring things under control again," he
said. Winfried Mack, a member of the state parliament representing
the town said, "The right to asylum is not there for us to take
in entire peoples." Finally, Gunter Bühler, the mayor, said,
"It's my opinion that we are not going to be able to tackle this
as easily as the chancellor says."
Then it was the
audience's turn to speak. "Our chancellor has been pursuing
policies that I would have expected from the left," said the
first, noting that Merkel eliminated Germany's mandatory military
conscription, she ordered the closure of the country's nuclear power
plants and she made concessions to Greece in the debt crisis. And
now? "Now she's even threatening to divide Europe."
"We will not,
at the bottom, be able to solve the problems created at the top,"
complained another. Then a third asked, "Does the chancellor
even remember what's in the oath she took?" Yes, parliamentarian
Mack said, defending his party boss before then slightly distancing
himself from her. "I personally wouldn't have done that with the
selfies (which Merkel took together with refugees), there was a
certain amount of clumsiness in it." At this point you could
hear people muttering the word "stupidity."
At a protest on Oct.
10 held by the Alternative for Germany, a right-wing populist party,
in Freilassing, the a border city where many of the thousands of
refugees are arriving, a demonstrator held up a sign reading: "That
is not my chancellor."
At a recent meeting
of the CDU's national executive committee, Finance Minister Wolfgang
Schäuble reported that the mood in the party base had deteriorated
to a "dramatic" degree, especially in southern Germany and
in the eastern state of Saxony, where the state chapters of the CDU
tend to be more conservative.
In the Saxony
chapter, general secretary Michael Kretschmer resorts to carefully
selected euphemisms to describe the situation, saying, "The
voice of the people is of course very present." That's one way
of describing it. At a protest in the town of Schkeuditz near
Leipzig, a CDU member could recently be seen holding up a placard
reading, "Dethrone Merkel."
Overstretched
Christian Hartmann,
the head of the party in the populous city of Dresden, said that his
local chapter is divided. Some members have joined up with the
right-wing populist Pegida movement, whereas others are attending the
counter-protests. But, he adds, "The skepticism as to whether
the political policies pursued thus far can be successful is gaining
the upper hand. The general feeling is that we are structurally and
organizationally overstretched."
Take the state of
Hesse, for example, where the state chapter of the CDU is also
comparably conservative. "Of course many of our supporters and
members are unsettled," says Elmar Bociek, who is running to
become mayor next Sunday in the town of Sulzbach. During his
campaign, he says, he has gone from door to door and the first issue
on the tongues of people in most of the homes he visits is that of
the refugees.
Bociek is one of 34
CDU politicians at the municipal level who joined together four weeks
ago to send an open letter to the chancellor in which they described
"major concern for the future of our country." By
disassociating himself from the chancellor's policies, Bociek has
helped his campaign.
"The people are
already noticing that we have a different party base here than the
national party," the local politician says. He believes the
protests are starting to have an effect. With negotiations with
Turkey, new asylum decisions and an initiative to secure better
cooperation in Europe, it appears Merkel is starting to take action.
Protesters with the
Alternative for Germany Party at a demonstration in Berlin on
Saturday hold up signs with slogans like, "Clear rules are
needed for immigration," "Limit immigration" or "Mrs.
Merkel, this isn't your country! Resign!"
Next spring,
elections are to be held in three German states: Saxony-Anhalt,
Rhineland Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg. The election in the
latter will be the most important because the CDU wants to correct a
historic anomaly. The CDU had ruled in the state for 58 years until
they were unseated by the Green Party in 2011, an affront the party
still hasn't recovered from.
But how will the
party run against Winfried Kretschmann, the state's Green Party
governor, when he is constantly praising the chancellor for her
handling of the refugee issue? Party leaders in the state, under the
leadership of Thomas Strobl, who is also a member of the national
committee, are waffling. "The CDU Baden-Württemberg supports
our chancellor," Strobl claims, even if people "are of a
different opinion when it comes to one issue or the other."
Such protestations
of loyalty, however, are often indicators of deeper discontent. And
there are open voices against the chancellor's policies in the state
as well. Nikolas Löbel, a young CDU leader in the state, is calling
for a "temporary stop to the acceptance of additional refugees
and asylum-seekers." Otherwise Germany threatens to be
"infiltrated."
District CDU chair
Thomas Bareiss, who is also a member of the federal parliament,
demonstrated his rejection of Merkel's policies in his choice of a
keynote speaker. He invited Zoltán Balong, Hungary's education
minister, to speak at a recent local party event. "With our
fence, we are also protecting Germany's border," said the close
confidante to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Merkel herself is
expected to make nine appearances during the election campaign in
Baden-Württemberg. When she does, she will find a party that is torn
-- because although the number of her fans in the state has shrunk,
they have not disappeared. In mid-October, 26 mayors and 10 members
of the state parliament, signed a letter stating that they support
her "clear position" and her "endurance."
But in eastern
German states, the image is clear. "The mood in the CDU in
Saxony is similar to that of the CSU," says Matthias Rössler,
the CDU president of the state parliament. On Nov. 14, the state
chapter will be holding its own party conference. As their guest
speaker, they have invited Horst Seehofer, the man who himself
recently invited Orbán.
Perils for Merkel
It's a strange
development for Merkel. It has been a long time since she has faced
such dissent. But there's another reason that the development could
become perilous for Merkel. Recently, greater scrutiny has been
placed on Merkel's policies of the past months -- and it has revealed
that she has made some far reaching mistakes.
For one, Merkel's
Chancellery responded far too late to the historic dimensions of the
crisis. Already as far back as February, local communities had
already begun ringing the alarm for help. In May, transit country
Serbia began preparing for larger refugee movements. But officials in
Berlin did nothing.
The Interior
Ministry refused to allow the Federal Office for Migration and
Refugees to hire additional staff for processing asylum applications
and thousands of old cases were left unprocessed. Later, when it
became clear that the task at hand was too much for the head of the
agency, he still remained in office for weeks.
In June, CDU members
of the state legislature in Baden-Württemberg warned in Berlin that
the situation could get out of hand, but federal government officials
didn't even begin to think about switching into crisis mode.
And then came
Hungary. Merkel's decision to open the border was correct. There was
a humanitarian emergency and there was no time for lengthy
consideration. But even correct decisions can have undesired
consequences. Merkel failed to strongly state that taking in refugees
in this way was an exception. It created the impression that Germany
was prepared to accept every refugee who came to Europe. She didn't
mean it that way, but that was the message that many wanted to hear.
Playing into Orbán's
Hands
Merkel's move played
right into the hands of Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán. He had
wanted to suspend the Dublin Agreement, which requires asylum
applications to be processed in the European country where refugees
first arrive. Under Dublin, his country would have been forced to
take in many of the refugees. The chancellor did him a favor in
opening the borders and suspending the original rules.
"A European
problem was turned into a German one," Berlin's Tagesspiegel
newspaper wrote in an editorial. And the point at which Merkel called
for European solidarity came too late. Germany's partners understood
action taken by the government in Berlin to be an invitation to
simply pass the refugees on to Germany. Orbán accused Merkel of
brazenness and even moral imperialism.
All at once, the
balance of power in the EU was turned on its head. As it turns out,
the woman who until very recently had been hailed the "Queen of
Europe" has insufficient leverage to force her European
neighbors to help.
Instead, Merkel has
navigated herself into a corner. The fact that she has been abandoned
by both her European neighbors and many within her own party has
strongly reduced the chancellor's room for maneuver. Nor is any help
from her coalition partner, the center- left Social Democrats (SPD),
to be expected.
Instead, the SPD are
observing with barely concealed satisfaction how their seemingly
invincible opponent is weakening herself. They seem to be taking a
sit back and relax attitude, even though the party itself doesn't
stand to profit from the chancellor's weakness due to its perpetually
weak standing in public opinion polls, where it appears to have
become stuck on 25 percent, a pitiful figure for a once large party.
After initially
expressing sympathy for Seehofer's demand to establish "transit
zones," the party is now indicating an unwillingness to
compromise. "We will not agree to the detention centers,"
said Thomas Oppermann, the head of the party's group in parliament.
Instead he is calling for the further suspension of the Schengen
Agreement. "Independent of that, however, we need to quickly
apply assertive border controls and ensure that there are orderly
conditions when it comes to entry into Germany."
Merkel is wavering,
but is there a chance she will actually fall? The threat has never
been as great during her 10 years in office. At the same time, Merkel
is also an experienced crisis manager who knows that her political
survival is dependent on lowering the number of refugees.
The CDU and the CSU
tend to hold on to their leaders as long as they can continue to win
elections. In March, voters will go to the polling stations in three
German states. In that sense, Merkel has precisely four months' time
to get the situation under control.
By Melanie Amann,
Matthias Bartsch, Jan Friedmann, Konstantin von Hammerstein, Björn
Hengst, Horand Knaup, Ralf Neukirch, Michael Sauga and Steffen Winter
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