terça-feira, 15 de dezembro de 2015

Merkel pushes the vision thing on migration


Merkel pushes the vision thing on migration

Chancellor addresses migration crisis, pleasing all sides of her party in the process.

By JANOSCH DELCKER 12/14/15, 8:53 PM CET Updated 12/14/15, 9:15 PM CET

KARLSRUHE, Germany — Angela Merkel, a trained physicist with an analytical mindset, likes to appeal to Germans’ logic rather than their feelings when promoting her policy ideas, but she pulled out all the emotional stops Monday to sell her strategy on refugees.

Trying to allay fears in her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that Germany will be swamped by an estimated one million refugees who are expected to arrive this year, the chancellor told the CDU party congress that her decision three months ago to open the borders to people fleeing war in Syria was a “humanitarian imperative,” which she cast in a tradition of CDU post-war statesmen like Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard and Helmut Kohl.


The migration crisis is “a historic test for Europe,” said the conservative chancellor. Judging by the 10-minute standing ovation that greeted her speech, it worked like a dream.

With a wide-ranging 73-minute address to the party faithful in Karlsruhe, Merkel effectively quashed an attempt by the right-wing of the party to impose upper limits — Obergrenzen in German, referred to by the media as the ‘O-word’ — on refugees.

We will reduce the number of refugees noticeably — Angela Merkel
A potential revolt had been building behind the scenes for weeks ahead of the annual party congress. The German media portrayed it as a showdown.

On one side were the arch-conservatives from the CDU’s youth branch Junge Union and from its business wing. Drawing moral support from the CDU’s traditionally more conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the plan was to submit a motion demanding an upper limit on refugees at the congress — a direct challenge to Merkel.

“It’s being said that if everything remains the way things are now, it will be too much for Germany,” Carsten Linnemann, head of the CDU’s conservative business wing, told reporters on Sunday night, before Monday’s speech.

On the other hand, the party leader known as Mutti (Mum) was defending the need to grant refugee to hapless Syrians, and rejecting the notion of a fixed limit.

“We will reduce the number of refugees noticeably,” said the chancellor, adding: “This is in Germany’s and Europe’s interest, and in the interest of the refugees.”

It sounded bland enough. But thanks to some agile negotiating on the eve of the congress on Sunday night, Merkel managed to impose what she portrays as a principled stand, the conservatives in the CDU felt they had secured a good compromise, and the entire CDU — which has no clear successor to Merkel in sight — was relieved that any doubts about the third-term chancellor’s authority over her party had been dispelled.

“We did not cling to terminology — it was all about the cause,” said the 30-year-old head of the Junge Union, Paul Zimiak, implying that he had got what he wanted.

Merkel blended an appeal to her audience’s patriotism — saying Germany would rise to the challenge because it had a vocation “to achieve great things” — with scorn for the failure of much of the rest of Europe to accept what Germany considers their fare share of refugees.

This new-found unity within the CDU will likely mean that the conservative-led government will put even more pressure on other EU countries to address what Merkel calls their “lack of solidarity” in dealing with the refugee crisis, starting with the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels later this week.

“Sometimes it makes you want to go mad,” Merkel said in reference to negotiations with her European partners. “But it’s never been easy in Europe, never in all of these 10 years that I have so far experienced.”

Authors:


Janosch Delcker  

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