Voters handed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives their worst-ever result in Hamburg on Sunday, punishing them for flirting with the far-right in an eastern state and descending into a messy leadership battle.

Preliminary results also showed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) just scraping into the Hamburg parliament, only four days after a racist gunman killed 11 people, including himself, in the western town of Hanau.

The Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens celebrated in Germany’s second-biggest city after taking first and second place, meaning they will probably keep ruling together in the northern port and city-state.

The conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) suffered after party leader and Merkel protege Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said she would stand aside, blowing open the race to succeed the chancellor and throwing the party into turmoil.

The CDU slipped into third place, scoring just 11.2 percent. The AfD, which has capitalized on anger over Merkel’s open-door migrant policy, especially in the former Communist East, won 5.3 percent, just over the 5 percent threshold needed to get into the state parliament, according to the preliminary results.

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s move came after an eastern branch of the CDU defied the national party and voted with the AfD to install a state premier from a third party – breaking a postwar consensus among established parties of shunning the far-right.

“It is a bitter day for the CDU in Germany and a historically bad result in Hamburg,” said CDU Secretary-General Paul Ziemiak.

The CDU leadership team meets on Monday and Kramp-Karrenbauer is expected to set out a timetable for a decision on the party chair and possibly the chancellor candidate. Four or five candidates are jockeying for the jobs.

Merkel, chancellor for almost 15 years, has said she will not run again in the next federal election, due by October 2021.

Preliminary results put the SPD, who share power with the conservatives at the federal level, down about 6 points from the last vote in 2015 but on 39.1 percent, still by the far the biggest party in Hamburg.

The Greens were the biggest winners, reflecting their national strength driven by growing fears about climate change. They almost doubled their vote to 24.1 percent and national co-leader Robert Habeck declared it a “fantastic result”.

Nationally, the Greens are second, behind the conservative bloc, and many commentators expect them to have a role in the next federal government.

Source: https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-angela-merkels-conservatives-far-right-afd-punished-in-german-state/

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New details have emerged in the investigation into the August 2018 demonstrations in Chemnitz that show extreme right-wing individuals made specific plans to “hunt” migrants and foreign-looking individuals, German media reported.

The news sheds further details on the events one year ago that resulted in Chemnitz taking center stage in discussions on the prevalence of right-wing extremism in Germany and that nearly caused the downfall of Angela Merkel’s national coalition government.

A ‘great readiness to use violence’ in Chemnitz

According to research by German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, and broadcasters WDR and NDR, the Saxony Criminal Police Office evaluated chat messages exchanged between known members of Chemnitz’s extreme right scene between August 26 and 28.

On August 26, a German national was killed in a stabbing in Chemnitz. Non-German nationals were suspected of the crime, with a 23-year-old Syrian national recently convicted of manslaughter in the crime.

The stabbing led to a week of far-right protests in the city that drew neo-Nazis from across Germany and saw migrants or foreign-looking individuals chased in the streets.

Social media was also used to draw right-wing extremists from across Germany to Chemnitz to take part in anti-immigrant protests

The Saxony report summarized that the demonstrations were marked by “great readiness to use violence against police officials, people with actual or immigrant backgrounds, political opponents and journalists,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung said.

The report also stated that the chat participants used the word “hunt” (“Jagd”) repeatedly as the events in Chemnitz were ongoing, and described wanting to or having violently attacked people of immigrant background.

The document also states that the chat participants boasted among themselves about having successfully hunted supposed migrants.

The chats point to “the actual implementation of violent criminal acts against foreigners,” the report read.

The right-wing violence in Chemnitz unleashed a debate over whether or not foreigners and foreign-looking individuals had been specifically targeted and pursued.

Evidence against doubts that shook the government

The then-president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, disputed the idea that such a hunt had taken place and openly questioned the authenticity of videos showing foreign-looking individuals being chased.

Maassen was initially promoted into a different position before being forced into retirement. The events almost toppled Merkel’s government.

The doubts expressed by Maassen, a member of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), as well as his closeness to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, triggered a crisis that nearly brought down the government coalition. The co-governing Social Democrats (SPD) demanded his removal. Maassen was eventually forced into retirement.

The Saxony police report is part of an investigation into the August 2018 Chemnitz events and is in the hands of the attorney general’s office for further evaluation.

Death sparks demonstrations

The demonstrations were sparked by a deadly brawl that broke out in the German city of Chemnitz in the early hours of Sunday (August 26). What started out as a war of words resulted in a 35-year-old man being stabbed to death. Hours later, spontaneous, anti-migrant protests took over the streets of Chemnitz.

German-Cuban killed

A German-Cuban man was stabbed in an altercation involving 10 people, several of whom were of “various nationalities,” police sources said. The victim, named only as Daniel H., was apparently well-known among various political groups in the area. Two men in their 30s were also stabbed and seriously injured, and a 22-year-old Iraqi and 23-year-old Syrian are in custody over the killing.

Police reinforcements called

By Sunday afternoon, some 800 people had gathered to protest the man’s death, including far-right groups. Authorities said the crowd was largely uncooperative and threw bottles at police officers. Police reinforcements had to be called in from nearby cities. The mobilizations were spontaneous and are thought to have surfaced following calls to demonstrate on social media.

Misinformation

German authorities said that those far-right groups spread misinformation on the internet. Among the false claims was that the victim of the knife attack died protecting a woman.

Protests and counterprotests

Thousands of far-right and counterdemonstrators faced off in a second day of protest Monday. Several people were injured as objects and fireworks were hurled. Video footage showed the far-right “Pro Chemnitz” movement holding a banner with a quote from early 20th-century poet Anton Günther reading “German and free we aim to be.”

‘No place for Nazis’

Counter-demonstrators denouncing right-wing extremism also took to the streets of Chemnitz. Among the protesters were Antifa, who clashed with right-wing demonstrators.

Author: Louisa Wright

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-right-wing-extremists-planned-hunt-of-migrants-reports/a-50176487

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The post Angela Merkel’s future in doubt as Germany’s coalition partners hold crisis talks first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Gynecologists, hospitals and public health services will now be allowed to share essential information about where and how women can terminate unwanted pregnancies.

The bill is expected to be approved by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet on Feb. 6 and then pass both houses of parliament.

German law allows abortions but effectively discourages them through various hurdles, including the law in question, article 219a, which dates to May 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler assumed full powers of Nazi Germany.

Last year gynecologist Kristina Haenel was fined €6,000 ($6,800) for breaking the law by publishing information on abortion services on her website.

The case revived an emotional debate in the coalition government led by Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).

Junior partners the Social Democrats (SPD) wanted the article scrapped, a demand backed by leftist opposition parties the Greens and Die Linke.

In the end the ruling parties reached a compromise that many read as a defeat for the SPD.

Health Minister Jens Spahn of the CDU said women needed access to crucial information but added that abortions should not be advertised because they are “not a medical procedure like any other.”

Andrea Nahles, the SPD leader, nonetheless welcomed the agreement, tweeting that “women are finally getting the information they need.”

The draft bill seen by AFP would allow federal health authorities and the German Medical Association to publish nationwide lists of doctors who perform abortions.

In other changes, the age limit for women entitled to free contraceptives would be raised from 20 to 22 years, and training on performing abortions will be expanded for medical students.

Greens Party co-chief Annalena Baerbock criticized the compromise deal, arguing that it signals lingering “distrust” of a woman’s ability to choose.

Linke party lawmaker Cornelia Moehring similarly charged that, by refusing to scrap the article outright, the government was continuing to treat abortion as “a grubby issue” and a “taboo subject.”

Germany, despite being a leading voice for women’s rights in the 1970s, imposes tight restrictions on abortion, permitting it only under strictly regulated circumstances.

It is left out of universities’ course books for student doctors and kept unavailable in swathes of the country.

A woman who wants to abort within the first trimester is required to attend a consultation at a registered centre.

The aim of the interview is to “incite the woman to continue the pregnancy,” according to the rules, even if in the end she has the final say.

Excluding special circumstances such as a pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother, or one arising from rape, abortion is not a procedure that is reimbursable by health insurance.

In some regions, including in the predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria, it may be necessary to travel 100 kilometers to find a doctor who performs the procedure.

Germany records an average of 100,000 abortions for 790,000 births, about half the rate of neighboring France.

Source:  https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/01/29/world/social-issues-world/germany-soften-advertising-ban-abortions/#.XFEf_lxKiUk

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Some 33 percent backed businessman Friedrich Merz while 7 percent favored Health Minister Jens Spahn, according to the poll of 1,200 people that Mannheim-based Forschungsgruppe Wahlen carried out for broadcaster ZDF between Nov. 6 and 8.

It is up to delegates of the CDU party to elect their new leader – rather than the entire conservative bloc, of which the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) is also part – but opinions among the conservatives are likely to influence how delegates vote, ZDF said.

The post German conservatives back Merkel protege for new CDU leader: poll first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Who wants to deport refugees from Germany to Syria?

The rape of a young woman in the southwestern city of Freiburg has reignited the debate over deporting criminal asylum-seekers. At least seven Syrian men and one German man are suspected of raping an 18-year-old student in mid-October. In response, a number of conservative politicians have demanded the government be able to deport Syrian refugees accused of severe crimes back to their native country.

If the situation in war-torn Syria “continues to improve, even if only in parts of the country, deporting a limited circle of persons should no longer be barred across the board,” Mathias Middelberg, a parliamentarian and domestic policy spokesperson for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), told Die Welt newspaper.

Does deportation mean repatriation?

The terminology is often confused when debating the issue of asylum in Germany. Last year, lawmakers from the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party pushed for the voluntary repatriation of Syrians within the framework of an agreement with the Syrian government. Previously, however, the AfD had demanded repatriating Syrians against their will. The current proposal put forth by the CDU, along with its Bavarian CSU sister party, also focuses on repatriation, though it is limited to criminal offenders at this point.

Read more: How do deportations work in Germany?

Those people with an approved refugee status can only expelled if they pose a threat to public safety and order, for instance if they have been sentenced to at least two years in prison. When that happens, the person in question loses his or her residence permit and is legally obliged to leave the country. If the authorities are forced to remove the person from Germany, that is called deportation.

Is it likely Syrians will be deported?

By 2012, all of Germany’s states had put deportation to Syria on hold due to reports of torture and violence across the country, a decision that has been reviewed and extended every year, most recently until the end of 2018. The security situation in Syria has not been re-assessed since 2012.

At a conference of Germany’s interior ministers later this month, the states will again have to decide whether to extend the deportation ban to Syria. The vote must be unanimous. The CDU/CSU is currently represented by nine state ministers and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) by seven — it is considered unlikely that the SPD will agree to deportations to Syria.

How safe is Syria?

Opinion varies. Some observers, including the AfD party in parliament, say the danger of war has ceased completely in certain regions. Actual fighting is only going on in a small part of the country, according to the AfD.

Read more: Germans upbeat about immigration, study finds

The United Nations says violent clashes in Syria have in fact subsided somewhat. The UN’s refugee agency, however, says that every single region is directly or indirectly affected by the war and violence, and that no country should send refugees back against their will.

How many Syrian refugees live in Germany?

According to figures from June 2018, around 800,000 Syrians have fled to Germany since the start of the civil war. Only a few thousand of them are entitled to asylum. However, the vast majority are recognized as refugees under the Geneva Refugee Convention: they fled their country for fear of persecution and are therefore granted protection.

A third group has been granted what is known as subsidiary protection, due to the ongoing war in their own country. They do not qualify for asylum nor are they recognized as refugees under the Geneva Convention. They have not been deported, and instead are granted a residence permit that can be extended.

Have Syrian refugees been returning home voluntarily?

The number of returnees from Germany is probably negligible. The estimated numbers of Syrians who have returned to their country from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq vary between the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

Read more: Germany ‘ignoring’ ECJ ruling on refugee reunification

Most Syrian refugees worldwide can only imagine a return once the war is over, and aid supply is reasonably secure again, according to a UN survey.

Who is subject to deportation?

Currently, 235,000 foreigners in Germany are legally obligated to leave the country. Around 174,000 of these people have obtained a “Duldung,” or tolerated permit to stay, and can thus legally remain for the time being. The other roughly 61,000 people without this permit are actually supposed to leave the country.

Asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected are regarded as “obliged to leave the country.” They have up to two weeks to file an appeal against their asylum decision with the help of a lawyer. On average, these proceedings take about six months and as a rule, the applicants cannot be deported during this time. If they lose their appeal, they must leave the country. In the first half of 2018, around 12,000 people were deported from Germany.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmakers-push-for-syrian-refugee-deportations/a-46162773

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LAST week a dispute over immigration policy took Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), their conservative Bavarian partners, to the brink of divorce. “I can’t work with this woman any more!” a furious Horst Seehofer, the CSU interior minister, fumed of the chancellor for blocking his proposal to turn migrants registered in other EU countries back at German borders. Open hostilities flew between CDU and CSU MPs, who sit in a single parliamentary group, in the halls of the Bundestag as the Bavarians refused to back  down, pouring scorn on the chancellor’s request for two weeks to find a “European solution”.

But the weekend cooled heads and now détente has broken out. A meeting of the CSU leadership in Munich yesterday gave Mr Seehofer its blessing to impose the new border regime against Mrs Merkel’s will (whether or not the wording of the German constitution gives him the right to do so is debatable), but agreed that he would not act on this for two weeks, waiting to see the outcome of the chancellor’s European negotiations. For her part she conceded her interior minister permission to turn back refugees banned from Germany; albeit that measure is already mostly in effect.

The dispute is now stable, but not yet resolved. The CSU remains sceptical about the chancellor’s ability, at the EU summit on June 28th and 29th, to forge a long-elusive deal fixing the Dublin system regulating immigration to the EU, which grants responsibility for registering and processing immigrants to the member state where they first arrive. The Bavarians, whose state borders Austria and thus is the main entry point for those travelling north from Greece or Italy, accuse southern European states of waving through “asylum tourists” to Germany.

Mr Seehofer considers the long-term solution “anchor centres”, centralised immigration camps currently in operation in Bavaria, where applicants can be monitored and promptly deported if denied the right to stay. Until they are rolled out across the country, he reckons the only answer is to refuse entry to Germany to those registered elsewhere in the EU. How practical this would be is doubtful. The logistics of comprehensively manning, say, the 815km-long German-Austrian border, with its roughly 70 road crossings, are daunting. Whether Austria would readmit those refused entry by Germany is uncertain. Vienna might simply close its southern borders, prompting what Mrs Merkel described yesterday as a “domino effect”: a disastrous wave of unilateral border policies bringing down Europe’s free-movement regime. But the CSU’s goals are more than just practical: the party is also looking nervously at the state election in Bavaria in October, where the far-right Alternative for Germany threatens the party’s traditional hegemony.

What now? Mrs Merkel’s “European solution” will involve seeking bilateral deals with southern European states like Italy, Greece and Bulgaria to secure the prompt and automatic repatriation of immigrants from Germany to the states where they were first registered. These will not come easily: such countries feel they already bear an unfair share of the immigration burden. Indeed Italy’s new populist government, and particularly Matteo Salvini, its hard-right interior minister, is determined to reduce this burden at almost any cost. The chancellor will surely need to bring out her cheque-book. In her press conference yesterday she suggested she sees her existing cash-for-repatriations deal with Turkey, which has helped reduce flows of immigrants to Germany, as a template.

Following the EU summit late next week Mrs Merkel is due to present her achievements back in Berlin on July 1st. Then it will be up to the CSU to decide whether to accept them as substitutes for the threatened border policy, or whether Mr Seehofer should act unilaterally. The interior minister’s tough talk over the past days has left him little room to back down; he is in any case under pressure from Markus Söder, his long-time rival and the current prime minister of Bavaria, and Alexander Dobrindt, the CSU’s leader in the Bundestag, to keep up the pressure on the chancellor. Most likely is that Mrs Merkel will achieve enough in her European talks over the coming days for some compromise (perhaps involving step-by-step increases in border patrols and checks) to be reached with the CSU. But it is far from certain.

But if not? Mrs Merkel has made it clear that unilateral action by Mr Seehofer would be an act of war, yesterday stressing that the absence of a European solution should not automatically lead to the new controls and asserting that such matters were her responsibility as chancellor. All of which would make it hard for her to smooth over relations with any semblance of authority in the event of a unilateral move by her interior minister in early July.

In that event Mrs Merkel may therefore have no practical alternative but to fire him, which would probably eject the CSU from her coalition, leaving its remaining components (her CDU and the Social Democrats) just short of a majority. The Greens or the pro-business Free Democrats might be persuaded to make up the numbers, perhaps supporting the government in crucial votes without formally joining it. But Mrs Merkel’s authority would be greatly, perhaps terminally, diminished. She might stand down in favour of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the CDU general secretary and her preferred heir. A more disorderly departure might favour the chances of more Merkel-critical figures in the CDU, like Jens Spahn, the health minister and an ally of Mr Dobrindt.

Yet for now, as last week, a health-warning applies: do not write off Mrs Merkel just yet. The chancellor remains the most popular politician in Germany. She retains the support of most of her party; including that of a number of MPs not currently speaking up, to avoid further inflaming relations with the CSU, but who would stand behind her should her leadership come under dire threat. None of her possible replacements looks quite ready to step into her shoes yet (were this drama playing out in a couple of years’ time the picture might be different). The CSU’s tactics seem to be backfiring: polls show support for both the CDU/CSU nationally and the CSU in Bavaria falling. Many in the CDU, and some quietly sceptical moderates in the CSU, are losing patience with Mr Seehofer’s theatrics. It is one of the central rules of German politics that voters prize stability above most things. For as long as Mrs Merkel looks a better guarantor of that stability than her rivals, she remains a force to be reckoned with.

Source: https://www.economist.com/kaffeeklatsch/2018/06/19/angela-merkel-has-two-weeks-to-keep-germanys-centre-right-together

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MAINZ, Germany — Not even 100 days after she negotiated her way to a fourth term as German leader, Angela Merkel is mired in a political crisis that underscores Europe’s divisions over immigration amid a surge in populism.

The German chancellor faces a showdown with her own interior minister that threatens not only her fragile ruling alliance but also her European Union-wide vision of cooperation to deal with the migrant crisis.

The world’s most powerful woman will embark on a weekend of talks ahead of a Monday meeting that could decide her future — and potentially signal the end of the Merkel era. She has been in power since 2005.

Along with French President Emmanuel Macron, Merkel is seen as one of the last bastions of European liberal democracy amid the rise of populism across the continent.

Merkel may be forced to make a U-turn on her open-door policy which has already been scaled back since Germany opened its borders to welcome around 1 million asylum-seekers in 2015. At times more than 10,000 people were arriving daily in the country, which had a population of around 81 million.

Migrants walk from the main station in Dortmund, Germany, in September 2015.Martin Meissner / AP file

Her refugee policy is widely blamed for a surge in support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which became the main opposition party after last September’s inconclusive election.

Gemany’s political turmoil comes amid a rise in populism and anti-immigration sentiment across Europe, including in neighbors such as Poland, Austria and Hungary.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, a conservative critic of Merkel’s migration policy, this week pushed for an “axis of the willing” among Austria, Germany and Italy to fight illegal migration.

It is a view shared by German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who wants to reject migrants at his country’s border if they have already registered in other E.U. states to the south.

In March, Seehofer told a newspaper that “Islam does not belong to Germany.” Seehofer is a member of Merkel’s CSU Bavarian allies, who are further to the right than her own Christian Democrats (CDU). He has also vowed to implement a “master plan for quicker deportations.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition is at risk after clashes with Interior Minister Horst Seehofer over Germany’s refugee policy.Carsten Koall / Getty Images

Keen not to antagonize Germany’s neighbors, Merkel prefers an E.U.-wide solution and wants to wait until the outcome of a summit of the bloc’s leaders on June 28. She has warned that Seehofer’s plan could shift the migrant burden onto countries such as Greece and Italy, where she is already unpopular for her economic policies.

“I personally think illegal migration is one of the big challenges for the European Union, so I don’t believe we should act unilaterally,” she said Thursday. “We should not act in an uncoordinated way, and we should not act at the expense of third parties.”

However, lawmakers from the CSU have backed Seehofer, who said he might defy Merkel by going ahead with his plan next week without her agreement.

If defied, Markel could be forced to fire Seehofer, or lead her CDU to split up the parliamentary bloc in which they have cooperated with the CSU since 1949. That would leave her coalition without a majority and could result in another election.

“Merkel is caught between a rock and a hard place,” said Thomas Walde, co-host of the political affairs show “Berlin Direkt” at NBC’s German partner channel ZDF. “She could either revoke her own policy, which would in effect mean that she is correcting herself and that everything she did so far was wrong. She cannot possibly do that because then she would be a lame duck in her position.”

He added: “Or, she could fire the minister of the interior on Monday, if he were to act. But then her coalition partner would leave the coalition, which would leave her without a majority in Parliament, which would be tough. She could try to go for a little while, but in effect that might lead to new elections.”

“She is fighting various fires in Europe.”

It is unclear whether Merkel would run again should German voters be sent back to the ballot box.

The CSU’s hardline stance on immigration comes ahead of regional elections in Germany. In the Bavarian heartland, along Germany’s southern border, the migrant crisis is a crucial issue and the party fears anti-immigration sentiment could bring to an end its decades-old dominance of Bavaria’s government.

However, others have criticized the CSU for putting its interests ahead of national unity.

Malu Dreyer, the premier of the Rhineland-Pfalz region, called the CSU’s tactics “scandalous.”

“The CSU is risking a lot, namely the stability of this government,” she said Thursday.

Andrea Nahles, the leader of Germany’s center-left Social Democrats, accused Bavaria’s CSU governor, Markus Soeder, of “behaving like a bonsai Trump.”

“We won’t allow the panic of the [Bavarian] state government to take all of Germany and Europe hostage,” said Nahles.

Gero Neugebauer, professor of politics at the Free University Berlin, said Seehofer’s CSU wanted to change the law that automatically guarantees asylum to anyone facing persecution overseas, replacing it with the power to accept or reject asylum applications.

However, the dispute is also a power struggle over who dominates German politics.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a news conference in Berlin on Friday.Markus Schreiber / AP

“That is why the dispute is in substance about [migration policy], but it is also a conflict between people,” Neugebauer said, adding Seehofer is hoping to emerge as the winner in a confrontation with Merkel.

It cannot be excluded that a collapse of the coalition government “could be imminent,” Neugebauer warned, but added that that would pose risks “which are higher for the CSU than for Merkel’s CDU party.”

Sophia Besch, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform think tank, said Merkel has become more isolated on the European stage but her patience and experience could ensure her political survival.

“She is fighting various fires in Europe. She has the Dutch and the northern and Scandinavian countries on her side, but she is certainly not strong enough to be called the undisputed leader of Europe as she might have been,” Besch added. “She’s great at surviving these things, in part because of her calm approach, which is in stark contrast to the posturing in the CSU and the ‘Merkel must go’ faction of the CDU.”

Merkel and Macron are among the few remaining European leaders to explicitly shun populism and the protectionist trade policies of President Donald Trump, and share a vision of a stronger, more unified E.U.-wide foreign policy.

Macron warned in March that the European Union faces a “civil war” and “fascination with the illiberal” as nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary turn away from liberal democracy and appealed to Europeans not to “sleepwalk” into authoritarianism.

Andy Eckardt reported from Mainz, Germany, and Alastair Jamieson from London.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/europes-border-crisis/germany-s-merkel-faces-political-crisis-over-migrant-policy-n883441

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After 13 years in power there is little that chancellor Angela Merkel has yet to do. Yet Wednesday marks a premiere for the German leader: the first-ever question-and-answer session between a chancellor and MPs in the Bundestag.

No one in Berlin expects a House of Commons-style roasting, particularly given Merkel’s fire-blanket rhetorical ability. And yet hopes are high that the session will help return a pulse – and public attention – to German parliamentary democracy.

Leaders of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) are licking their lips at the prospect of blaming the chancellor for a growing scandal over major mistakes in the asylum system following the 2015 refugee surge. European allies, meanwhile, hope she will use the opportunity to fill in the many blanks in her vision for the future of the EU.

Eight months have passed since French president Emmanuel Macron’s Sorbonne speech urging the EU be salvaged with a radical leap forward. Even by sober Merkel standards, the chancellor’s responses to date have fallen short, held back first by elections, then extended coalition talks and now by uncomfortable new political insecurities.

Not even a sprawling two-page interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine at the weekend provided all the answers on how far the bloc’s powerful leader is prepared to follow Macron on reforms.

ESM fund

A headline proposal of his plan is to transform the ESM bailout fund, born in the euro crisis, into a long-term European Monetary Fund (EMF) to offer member states short- and long-term loans in exchange for reforms. Reflecting disagreement around the continent, Paris and Berlin are still at odds over the terms of the loans, the size of the pot and the EMF’s legal basis.

Germany’s already limited enthusiasm for the EU executive has been dampened even more since the Macron proposals

Merkel says she is open to an EMF giving conditional, limited, reform-linked 30-year loans, as well as shorter-term loans to EU countries “that get into difficulty through external factors”.

The conditions for such shorter-term loans is looser than the “existential” risk required to activate ESM intervention, and has seen ears prick up in Germany. Fearful of a “transfer union” at German expense, many here are wary of the legal basis of any new fund.

The ESM is an intergovernmental construct, outside EU law, and Berlin wants to avoid placing the EMF entirely under the purview of the European Commission.

Germany’s already limited enthusiasm for the EU executive has been dampened even more since the Macron proposals, framed in many circles in Germany as an additional attempt to pickpocket German taxpayers.

Merkel argues the new fund should be “organised between states” and come under “the corresponding rights of national parliaments”. It should act as a second pillar of economic stability in the EU, she suggests, overseeing budgets as well as doling out loans.

That would make it the equal of the commission, infringing on its powers to examine states’ competitiveness and adherence to euro debt rules.

Germany is ready to make a greater financial contribution to the post-Brexit EU budget

She backs the idea of closing development gaps between member states by deploying an “innovation budget for the euro zone”. But, again given personal misgivings and fiscal hawks breathing down her neck, Merkel remains cautious.

She proposes a fund with a “low, double-digit” billion capacity to be introduced on a staggered basis, to evaluate its efficacy. And she left open a major question: whether or not it should be managed inside or outside the EU budget.

Germany is ready to make a greater financial contribution to the post-Brexit EU budget but, with an eye on the ascendant conservative camp inside her Christian Democrats (CDU), the Eurosceptic AfD and the populist Bild tabloid, “how much more is relative”.

‘First answer’

After waiting eight months, the Élysée Palace made the most of the German leader’s “first answer” to Macron’s far-reaching proposals, calling it a “positive move which shows the commitment to Europe of the chancellor and her government”.

At home, indicating the narrow corridor the chancellor has to tread, the modest Merkel proposals annoyed in equal measure both the pro-Macron and anti-transfer union camps.

Christian Lindner, head of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), suggested Merkel is backing an “overdraft” for wobbly EU neighbours and called for a “return to stability rules”.

Today’s Bundestag question time will likely be dominated by the political fallout of Germany’s asylum scandal and her push for common EU asylum rules. Less interest is likely to be given to her noteworthy backing at the weekend for common EU election lists and a joint EU military intervention force.

But after letting countless opportunities pass, Wednesday’s Bundestag question time provides an ideal stage to put a bit more meat on the bones of Germany’s EU plan.

“Compared to grand words Macron chose, Merkel’s draft appears rather meagre,” noted the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday. To achieve a compromise, the French leader will have to come down off his rhetorical roof, it added, while “Angela Merkel will have to climb a few stairs”.

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