The sun sets over the River Main in Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2019. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) – Michael Probst

BERLIN — European politics just now is a story of how one decision by a pastor’s dutiful daughter has made life miserable for a vicar’s dutiful daughter.

Two of the world’s most important conservative parties are involved in an unintended tutorial on a cardinal tenet of conservatism, the law of unintended consequences, which is that the unintended consequences of decisions in complex social situations are often larger than, and contrary to, those intended.

In 2015, Angela Merkel, the Federal Republic of Germany’s first chancellor from what was East Germany, chose to welcome into Germany about 1 million people, many of them Syrians, fleeing Middle Eastern carnage. This influx stoked European anxieties about immigration threatening social cohesion, anxieties that contributed to the 52 percent-48 percent vote in Britain’s 2016 referendum directing the government to extricate the United Kingdom from the European Union.

In 2019, Theresa May, who was not yet Britain’s prime minister when the referendum occurred and who voted to remain in the EU, is leading, or trying to lead, a fractious party that cannot govern because there is no majority for any plan to effectuate what in 2016 was, but might not still be, the voters’ Brexit desire.

For many years, Merkel has been the closest approximation to an answer to the famous question attributed to Henry Kissinger: If I want to talk to “Europe,” who do I call? She also has embodied Germany’s primal desire for stability, a desire that is the great national constant since Konrad Adenauer served as the Federal Republic of Germany’s first chancellor from 1949 to 1963.

Britain is perhaps, or sort of, exiting the EU. France’s “yellow vest” protesters recently commented on President Emmanuel Macron’s policies with a Gallic vigor (burning cars, smashing shop windows) sufficient to change governance in the predictable direction (taxes decreased, entitlements increased). So, stable Germany is even more important to Europe than it was when Kissinger said that Germany is too large for Europe and too small for the world.

The two greatest leaders of post-1945 Europe, Charles de Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher, opposed the aspiration of an ever-deeper political unification of Europe. Germany precipitated the post-1945 recoil against nationalism, which has been interpreted to dictate the dilution of nationalities by submersion of them into a transnational broth. For most Germans, tiptoeing through modern memory, disputing this interpretation still seems transgressive.

No European nation was as enchanted as Germany was by Barack Obama’s studied elegance and none is more repelled by Donald Trump’s visceral vulgarity. This especially matters at this moment when events are underscoring Germany’s necessary dependence for security on the United States: Germany lives in the neighborhood with two nations, Poland and Hungary, that have illiberal populist regimes. And not far over the horizon Vladimir Putin is destabilizing and dismembering Europe’s geographically largest nation, Ukraine. Germany’s dependence was inadvertently highlighted by Macron’s delusional statement that there must be a “true European army” to “protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States.”

Germany has two of the world’s great parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party, which in the 19th century invented social democracy that helped to drain the revolutionary steam from the left. Both are in flux.

The CDU is challenged from the right by Alternative for Germany (the subject of a subsequent column) and the SDP, which withered as the junior partner in Merkel’s coalition. The SDP is being eclipsed by the Green Party, whose support rivals that of the CDU, and which is the most popular party with German women.

Extremism, however, is quarantined by the civic culture that so values stability that a poll in this decade showed that more Germans fear inflation — the hyperinflation of 95 years ago was the ultimate destabilizer — than fear cancer or other serious illnesses.

Next year will be the 30th anniversary of German reunification. This will be an occasion for the world to acknowledge that, as has been truly said, today’s Germany is the best Germany the world has seen since it became Germany in 1871.

George Will is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.

Source: https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/commentary/as-europe-struggles-germany-still-a-beacon-of-stability/article_feee80ec-1059-11e9-92f2-67ef63fdf9ad.html

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The EU leaders’ summit came amid a deepening row over migrant arrivals caused by Italy’s new government refusing to take in a rescue ship carrying 630 migrants earlier this month. In Germany, where an “open doors” policy has led to the acceptance of some 1 million refugees, the subject has come close to bringing down the coalition government. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s interior minister has threatened to order a policy to turn away refugees at Germany’s borders, thereby defying EU law, in a debate that has showcased how voters are looking to their national governments and not the union to solve such problems.

A recent poll found that 62 percent of voters in Germany are in favor of turning away undocumented migrants. Within this context, if Merkel cannot make a deal to change the national mood, a breakdown in the coalition would benefit her anti-immigrant opponents in the Alternative for Germany party. Such an outcome in one of Europe’s more welcoming and liberal democracies would have huge repercussions for the EU.

Following 10 hours of negotiation, EU leaders emerged from talks with Donald Tusk, the head of the European Council, claiming that the member states had reached an accord on migration. The deal has been questioned for its limited scope, though it does include an agreement that EU countries would take in migrants rescued from the Mediterranean Sea. The whole summit, however, was tainted as Italy threatened to veto the entire text unless other EU states offered to assist with those arriving on its shores. Opposition from Hungary, Poland and other Central European states to any hint of mandatory action is what forced talks to continue into the early hours.

Though the euro jumped by more than half a percent following the deal, the fact that the bloc failed to agree on specific refugee quotas due to the opposition of increasingly far-right Central European governments means the issue will likely persist and affect the union’s long-term unity. Importantly, as the driving force behind the EU, it is not clear whether Merkel has achieved enough with this deal to offset her political battles at home.

The scale of the disagreement cannot be ignored. Merkel herself warned last week that the future of the EU hinged on whether it could agree collectively to overcome the “vital question” of migration. As Western European countries call for tolerance, Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban has called for a “strong border” to stop what he called an “invasion” of migrants. Echoing him, Italy’s new government has also concerned policy-makers by showing itself to be more sympathetic toward Russia. Given that EU leaders also met to agree wide-ranging economic sanctions against Moscow, the migrant crisis has been a distraction.

To a Russian leadership keen on exacerbating divisions in Europe, the crisis comes at an opportune moment, adding to the strains put on the union by Brexit. In addition, Austria, with its new right-wing coalition and far-right interior minister, has taken up the EU presidency and its young chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, plans to shift Europe to the right on migration. With such reactionary leadership more ideologically aligned with Russia, the principles of the EU risk being eroded further in the Kremlin’s favor.

The looming departure of the EU’s second-largest economy and its most important diplomatic and UN Security Council partner has not been the focus of the summit. British Prime Minister Theresa May headed to Brussels for a meeting that was once billed as the most critical moment to reach a deal on Brexit. However, owing to the growing threats the union faces on migration from right-wing policymakers, Brexit has barely featured.

Brexit campaigners had warned that, in quitting the EU, the UK had correctly timed its withdrawal from a bloc that is doomed to fail. Though this had seemed improbable to some, in the current context it seems that immigration may be the issue that leads to its collapse. The massive influx of people could very realistically derail the European dream, exposing the bloc’s weaknesses and divisions, leading to voters seeking the help of their sovereign governments and not the EU to solve their problems. In many respects, Brexit was only one symptom of a wider crisis, highlighting the policy implications of maintaining open borders.

As US President Donald Trump prepares to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin, many fear a deal being made between them at NATO’s expense. With the EU struggling to save its most precious achievement in the Schengen project, decision-makers in Brussels must call for unity in a continental climate that is growing ever more insecure.

• Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator, and an adviser to private clients between London and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Twitter: @Moulay_Zaid

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