March 14, 2016 5:04
pm
The
unravelling of Angela Merkel’s power
The
German chancellor has lost support at home and control in Europe
Gideon
Rachman
The fate of Angela
Merkel’s “open door” policy on refugees has assumed global
significance. Nationalists from Russia to the US are pointing at the
German chancellor’s policies as a symbol of the failure of an
out-of-touch liberal elite. In the most recent US presidential
debate, Donald Trump denounced Ms Merkel, adding: “Germany is a
disaster right now.” Even within the EU, many leaders, particularly
in the east, echo that sentiment.
As a result, this
weekend’s German regional elections were watched all over the world
for signs of an anti-Merkel backlash. In the event, the results were
ambiguous. The chancellor’s party, the Christian Democrats,
suffered a series of setbacks amid a surge in support for Alternative
für Deutschland, a populist anti-immigration party.
By the standards of
the rest of Europe (or the US), German voters remained pretty steady
— and the AfD are still a long way from power. Given that Germany
has received more than 1m refugees in less than a year, it is
remarkable that there has not been more of a backlash. (When I
recently asked a senior British politician how long a Merkel-style
“open door” for refugees would have lasted in the UK, he replied:
“Less than 24 hours.”)
Even in
Saxony-Anhalt, the region where the AfD did best, the
anti-immigration party attracted only 24 per cent of the vote, which
is far less than France’s National Front gets in its strongholds.
Nonetheless, the big
picture is that Ms Merkel’s political position is becoming steadily
weaker.
This time last year,
the chancellor was at the peak of her power, but her authority is
unravelling.
The past week has
illustrated the process. It began with Ms Merkel negotiating a
desperate and unstable deal between the EU and Turkey in an effort to
stem the flow of refugees into Germany. It ended with her party
losing ground in the elections.
The chancellor’s
loss of authority in both Germany and Europe are feeding on each
other. Ms Merkel’s failure to deliver a workable EU deal on
refugees has eroded her support at home. And now, with German voters
beginning to turn against her, the chancellor’s authority will be
further sapped at European level.
Ms Merkel’s key
partners are already beginning to unpick the EU-Turkey deal, with
François Hollande, the French president, casting doubt on the idea
that Turkey will swiftly gain visa-free access to Europe.
The verbal assaults
on Ms Merkel, both at home and abroad, are likely to intensify ahead
of an EU summit this week that is meant to finalise the Turkey deal.
Some of the
criticism is unfair. Ms Merkel was not responsible for the Syrian
civil war or the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And the
policies advocated by her critics — based on tougher frontier
controls and numerical limits to the numbers of refugees — present
serious problems of their own.
As the barriers go
up along the “Balkan route” to Germany, those problems are likely
to become more evident as the treatment of refugees becomes more
brutal, and desperate people get trapped in Greece, destabilising an
already weakened country.
Her position was
made worse by the fact that she seemed to have lost her ability to
look several moves ahead
Nonetheless, Ms
Merkel has also made serious mistakes. One way to understand how she
has mishandled the refugee issue is to contrast it with her approach
to the crisis in the eurozone. When it came to the euro, the
chancellor’s approach was defined by a deep concern for public
opinion in Germany, an understanding of the threats of moral hazard
and unintended consequences, and an ability to find the middle ground
between EU countries such as Finland and Greece. Those qualities,
combined with Germany’s financial clout, allowed Ms Merkel to
emerge as the indispensable leader of Europe.
Faced with the
refugee crisis, however, Ms Merkel adopted a very different, and much
less successful, approach. She gambled on the tolerance of the German
public. And rather than seeking out the European middle ground, she
took a position far to the left of almost all the other EU countries.
As a result, the
chancellor found herself losing support at home and unable to rally a
coalition in Europe. Her position was made worse by the fact that she
seemed to have lost her ability to look several moves ahead. She
failed to see how Germany’s “welcome culture” would spark a
fresh surge of refugees.
It is a partial
defence of Ms Merkel that, last summer, she was responding, under
immense pressure, to a tragic and fast-moving situation. But we are
now many months into the crisis and the chancellor still seems too
willing to base her policy on comforting illusions rather than
uncomfortable facts.
In particular, the
EU-Turkey deal — in which Turkey agreed to stop the flow of
refugees in return for major concessions from Europe — involves
incredible leaps of faith.
Why should the EU
trust a government led by a volatile authoritarian like President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan? And why should the Turks believe that the EU
will give them visa-free access and a smoother path to membership
when so many EU countries are clearly opposed to these ideas?
If and when the deal
collapses, Ms Merkel’s dwindling authority will suffer another
serious blow. It cannot afford too many more.
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