Merkel’s
migration plan will turn Greece into a huge campsite
The
German chancellor can save her open-door policy, but she’ll have to
spend billions on a pay-off
Josef Joffe
Monday 7 March 2016
18.01 GMT
The German
chancellor can save her open-door policy, but she’ll have to spend
billions on a pay-off
Last summer Angela
Merkel swung open her country’s gates to the largest migration
since the war. By year’s end, 1.1 million people had streamed into
Germany from the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans: in
January it was another 100,000.
And yet, the
chancellor won’t budge. Her mantra is “Wir schaffen das”,
Merkel-speak for “yes, we can”. At first, her compatriots did her
proud, putting to shame the French who keep several thousand refugees
cooped up in Calais, and the British who bar them from England’s
green and pleasant land. Germany’s authorities managed to whisk
thousands off into shelters across the country. Armies of donors and
volunteers pitched in with food, clothes and hands-on help.
But now “yes, we
can” sounds like a record stuck in a groove. Merkel’s approval
ratings have plunged from a peak of 75% to 46%. Can she handle the
refugee crisis? Eight out of 10 Germans say no. Would you vote for
Merkel’s Christian Democrats? The ayes are down by nine points
compared with the last election. And who is making hay? The
anti-immigrant populist right. The Alternative für Deutschland party
may score as much as 17% in the state election in Saxony-Anhalt on
Sunday.
The chancellor’s
impeccable moral intentions – her version of “give me your tired,
you poor, your huddled masses” – are crashing up against the
ballot box. Is her moral stance “irrational”, indeed,
“megalomaniac”, as Cicero magazine has asked. Merkel’s
political nemesis, Bavarian strongman Horst Seehofer, says: “I
simply cannot figure out her strategy.”
Dead-set against
closing German borders, Merkel has become a lonely giant. Even
Europe’s moral superpower Sweden imposed border controls in
January, followed by Denmark. In February, Austria gathered the heirs
of the former Habsburg empire to close off the “Balkan route”
from Turkey into central Europe.
Even Merkel’s
mightiest cabinet ally, Wolfgang Schäuble, is putting her on notice:
“The refugee numbers must be drastically cut. Otherwise, it is ‘we
can do it’ no more.” So Merkel has come up with a new mantra –
the “European solution” – which is precisely what has not
worked in the past.
For one, the rest of
Europe won’t take the refugee load off Germany. It is “keep out!”
in Hungary and Poland; the Scandinavians have essentially sealed
their borders; the Balkan countries just waved the refugees through
all the way to Austria, which sent them north with a hearty goodbye.
The approach is to
let the other guy handle it, which is exactly what Europeans, Berlin
included, did to Italy when migrants from North Africa began to pour
in after the outbreak of the Arab spring. So on to Merkel’s
“Europe-plus solution” anchored in Turkey.
The chancellor has
been trying to bribe Turkey with €3bn to keep refugees out of the
Schengen area. This borderless realm stretches from Portugal to
Poland, with Greece manning the easternmost ramparts. Turkey is
already playing unwilling host to about 2.5 million Syrians. And its
president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has his own fish to fry, such as
bombing Kurdish positions in Syria and closing down opposition
newspapers. Naturally, the first of these makes for more refugees.
Watch the €3bn bribe shoot upward.
But what about the
refugees who come by sea? A booming smuggling industry takes those
stranded in Turkey in rust buckets and rubber rafts to the closest
Greek islands. Berlin has put together a little Nato flotilla to
monitor the Aegean. But even with the British patrol boats, these
ships will do little more than detect the craft and relay their
positions to the Greek and Turkish coastguards.
Finally, the Germans
want to pour cash into the camps in Jordan and Lebanon to keep the
Syrian refugees from marching westward. The thrust of these desperate
manoeuvres is to outsource the problem. The hope is to transmute
Germany’s “no, we actually can’t” into “yes, others will
have to”. Nobody quite understands why Merkel, this consummate
reader of how the wind is blowing after 10 years in office, would
suddenly turn into a woman of the cloth, orating like Martin Luther,
“I cannot and will not recant” and so “act against my
conscience”. Luther prevailed against the Pope; Merkel’s
obstinacy in the face of her isolation sharpens the puzzle.
Actually, “Plan
B”, though cloaked in noble principle, is already in play. The
first part is to bribe the Turks. The second is the tacit threat to
seal Germany’s own borders; there goes Schengen, perhaps even the
EU itself. The third is to outsource the problem. And lo, the Balkan
bloc is deploying barbed-wire coils and battalions of guards far to
the southeast. It is now Fortress Schengen minus Greece – a small
price to pay to protect the core. If the dam holds, the refugee
stream will dwindle. Thus, Merkel could save her high-minded
open-door policy because it would no longer be tested by refugee
waves from the Middle East.
There is just one
problem with Germanising Europe’s strategy. Damming up the traffic
in Macedonia turns Greece, a failing state, into one huge campsite.
So the Greeks will have to be paid off while the Turks will gouge out
a lot more than €3bn. Germany, the EU’s Croesus, will foot most
of the bill.
But it’s worth it.
What’s 10, 20 or 30 billion euros against the catastrophic
alternative: Germany in revolt, Merkel swept out of office and Europe
damaged beyond repair?
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