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US Not Alone in Restricting Asylum Eligibility

Ramon Taylor — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 23:30:52 +0000

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers reopen the border gate of the Gateway International Bridge that connects downtown Matamoros, Mexico with Brownsville, Texas, Oct. 10, 2019.

Victoria Macchi and Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.

NEW YORK – U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to dramatically curtail claims for asylum in the United States — cheered by the administration’s supporters and condemned by immigration rights advocates — is unprecedented on America’s southern border but not unique on the world stage.

Europe, in particular, has imposed restrictive rules for asylum-seekers that predate this year’s flurry of activity in the United States.

Recent months have brought sweeping changes in how the U.S. handles asylum claims at the border. Those changes are expected to preclude asylum for the vast majority who seek it.

Washington has forged pacts with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, designating them as asylum destinations where claims are to be filed before protection is sought in the U.S. The accords work hand-in-hand with a Trump administration policy, temporarily greenlighted by the U.S. Supreme Court, stipulating that non-Mexicans must seek asylum in a third country they transited on route to the U.S. border before filing a claim in the U.S.

The result, according to critics, is a de facto asylum ban that forces people to file claims in some of the most impoverished and violent nations in the Americas.

“No one is seeking protection in countries from which everyone is fleeing,” said Helena Olea, an international human rights lawyer, and Alianza Americas human rights adviser.

President Donald Trump addresses a campaign rally, Oct. 10, 2019, in Minneapolis.

For his part, Trump on Thursday proudly touted his immigration agenda at a political rally in Minnesota, saying, “My administration is taking historic action to secure the border. We have reduced illegal border crossings by over 60% since May, and we are building the wall [between the United States and Mexico] faster than anyone ever anticipated it could be built.”

For all the attention the White House’s border initiatives have drawn, the United States is not alone in forging regional asylum deals in which nations share responsibility for processing claims filed by people fleeing persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations.

The “safe third” model

It has been 29 years since the European Union adopted its first “safe third country” asylum initiative, known as the Dublin Regulation. In its present-day form, any migrant who requests asylum at an E.U. country’s borders, having entered from another E.U. country (or Norway or Switzerland), is refused entry.

The procedure was intended to share the burden of asylum-seekers among nations party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

As the Syrian refugee crisis has worn on, leaders representing some of the involved nations have grown weary of burden-sharing responsibilities. Denmark, a member of the E.U., declined to participate in the Malta Agreement, a stop-gap effort to expedite screenings and redistribute migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea. The pact was signed by Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and Malta in September.

On Oct. 4, Italy signed a decree designating 13 non-E.U. countries across West Africa and Eastern Europe as “safe countries of origin.” The move gave Italy greater discretion to examine and reject asylum claims from those countries.

The U.S., meanwhile, has had a “safe third country” agreement in place since 2004 — with its northern neighbor, Canada. Like its recently signed agreements with Central American countries, the U.S.-Canada pact requires asylum-seekers who transit through either country to seek protection there first, regardless of their preference for an ultimate destination.

Economic migrants

In its interim final rule — the basis for the current U.S. asylum ban — the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) questioned whether some “aliens genuinely fear persecution or torture, or are simply economic migrants seeking to exploit our overburdened immigration system.”

Trump has long said that U.S. immigration law contains loopholes for economic migrants.

That sentiment, too, has reverberated among right-wing voters in Europe opposed to accepting asylum-seekers in their countries. In January, Italy’s then-Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said his country had taken in “too many fake refugees.”

Some see a more complicated dynamic — “mixed flows” of people fleeing both violence and economic distress — at a time of heightened migration overall.

“In the U.S. now, and Europe during their crisis, the entire human rights apparatuses were never designed to actually deal with that level of people,” said Cristobal Ramón, immigration project senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “[They] crumbled under the weight of all this.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) New York director, Ninette Kelley, says the agency has been working on a “holistic approach” with partners in the Central American region to address asylum capacity.

“We need to invest in trying to help the governments get control of their countries and impose law and security in accordance with human rights principles and, at the same time, reinforce asylum systems along routes so that we don’t see this mass exodus in an unmanageable way for any country,” said Kelly.

Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kevin McAleenan reacts while protesters interrupt his remarks at the Migration Policy Institute annual Immigration Law and Policy Conference in Washington, Oct. 7, 2019.

Funding asylum pacts

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, planned efforts to increase regional asylum capacity include $47 million in aid to Guatemala through the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“The goal is to build the shared capacity to extend asylum protections in partner countries in the region and ensure that those who need protection from persecution for political, racial, religious, or social group membership can seek them as close to home as possible, without putting themselves or their family in the hands of dangerous smugglers,” Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan wrote in prepared remarks for an immigration policy conference that was interrupted by protesters.

According to UNHCR’s 2018 Global Trends Report, 3.5 million people were awaiting decisions on their asylum applications by the end of 2018, while an additional 1.7 million had submitted new claims.

The U.S. was the world’s largest recipient of new individual applications (254,300). Peru, with a population one-tenth the size of the U.S., received 192,500 claims, followed by Germany (161,900), France (114,500), and Turkey (83,800), according to UNHCR.

A policeman observes the scene as immigrants who arrived aboard a cargo ship from Turkey queue for meals in a basketball arena where they have been given temporary shelter in the town of Ierapetra, Crete, Nov. 28, 2014.

In Turkey — where 1 in 22 people is a refugee — a March 2016 deal with the European Union determined that Syrian refugees on the Greek Islands could be returned to Turkey. In exchange, Europe would accept Syrian asylum-seekers already in Turkey.

Like the U.S.-Central American pacts, human rights activists have decried the E.U.-Turkey deal. Human Rights Watch reported in July that Turkish officials have been forcibly returning Syrian asylum-seekers to Syria, under the pretense of voluntary return.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Ramón says the U.S. should learn from the experiences of other nations that have sought to redirect flows of asylum-seekers.

“If there isn’t any capacity [in Central American nations], they [asylum-seekers] will likely just look at the situation, and say, ‘You know what? I’m not being processed. I’m going to try to go back to the United States,’ or in some cases, [they] may go back home,” Ramón said.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/usa/immigration/us-not-alone-restricting-asylum-eligibility

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What’s in the new German immigration law?

Andrea Dernbach and Paul Starzmann | Der Tagesspiegel | translated by Rob Kirby — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 10:11:42 +0000

German Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Hubertus Heil, German Minister of Economy and Energy Peter Altmaier and German Minister of the Interior, Construction and Homeland Horst Seehofer during a press conference on a skilled workers immigration law in Berlin, Germany, 2 October 2018. [Clemens Bilan/ epa]

Last week, the German cabinet agreed the key points for a “skilled workers immigration law” from third countries. But what are its aims and what will change? EURACTIV Germany’s media partner Der Tagesspiegel reports.

The German government is giving hope to migrants that they may be allowed to work in Germany.

How far does the new “skilled workers immigration law” go?

The new “skilled workers immigration law”, by definition, aims to maintain Germany as an economic centre and to secure its social systems. In addition to applying to graduates, the law should now also apply to people with professional qualifications – and not only in professions where there is a shortage of workers.

Immigrants with professional training, who can make a living for themselves in Germany will be allowed to come and look for a job for six months. In occupations where there is an acute shortage of skilled labour, such as in IT or care services, if a job has been accepted there does not even need to be proof of qualifications. At the same time, the German government undertakes to better inform potential applicants abroad and to guide them through the jungle of German administration.

What do the current rules look like and what’s new?

The immigration law essentially reiterates opportunities that already exist. It has already been possible for many years for non-EU citizens with a university degree to come to Germany to find work. In its 2015 Annual Report, the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR) noted that “Germany has moved from being a ‘latecomer’ or a ‘straggler’ to a ‘pioneer’ in the field of labour market policy and, as a result, has little to learn, at least at a legal-institutional level.”

At the time, the OECD already ranked Germany as being one of the most liberal countries for immigration in the world. However, the experts warned in 2015 that the implementation of liberal rules “in practice is often too cumbersome and bureaucratic”.

Experts: ‘Germany is massively dependent on immigration’

The German government has agreed on the cornerstones of the new Immigration Act. But experts, business representatives and trade unions see still significant room for improvement. EURACTIV Germany’s media partner “Der Tagesspiegel” reports.

The fact that this often confounds the legislators’ good intentions was discovered by Green MP Filiz Polat when she was on a trip through the Western Balkans in the spring. In the Western Balkans, German embassy staff deal with a large number of visa applications from a very young population, particularly in Kosovo.

Nevertheless, there are extensive checks as to whether the visa applicants’ specified jobs are fictitious or exploitative – a task which actually concerns the German employment agencies. This places an enormous burden on the visa departments and makes obtaining a German work visa an almost hopeless undertaking. Accordingly, it will be important that the new law does not run aground in practice.

What is the significance of this law?

The immigration law is highly symbolic from a political point of view. The Minister for Economic Affairs, Peter Altmaier (CDU), hoped that the legislation drew a “line” under an issue “which has co-determined the political debate for a quarter of a century.”

What he means by this is whether Germany is a country of immigration. Statistically speaking, the answer is clear- one in four Germans now has family roots abroad. Nevertheless, a position paper by the CDU and CSU stated that “Germany is not a classic country of immigration” and could also never become one. These parties have since moved away from this position. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer now backs the “immigration of skilled workers from third countries”.

May confirms EU immigration restrictions after Brexit

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has confirmed a post-Brexit clampdown on EU migrants, saying London will treat EU citizens the same as those from non-EU countries, while also seeking to reduce the influx of low-skilled migrants.

In 2010, he was still convinced “that we don’t need additional immigration from other cultures.” Of all of the parties represented in the Bundestag, only the far-right AfD still holds this view. On the other hand, the centre-right CDU, the CSU, the centre-left SPD, the liberal FDP, Die Linke (The Left), and the Greens are in favour of greater immigration.

Admittedly, the opposition parties do criticise the details of the planned immigration law. Nonetheless, its adoption represents quite an historic moment. Much like the phasing out of nuclear energy, a minority opinion (“Germany is a country of immigration”) has become a broad political consensus.

What does this law mean for refugees?

The governing Grand Coalition’s key issues paper stated that “we are maintaining the principle of separating asylum from economic migration”. In fact, the immigration law will have no impact on Germany’s asylum system. In accordance with the Geneva Convention, Germany will remain obliged to accommodate people fleeing persecution in other countries.

There could still be disagreement between the SPD and the union of CDU and CSU about how the “3+2-rule” will be implemented. This rule protects working asylum seekers from being deported for a maximum of five years. To date, German states led by the CDU or CSU have interpreted the regulation in a more restrictive way. In cases of doubt they have preferred to deport people rather than to grant work permits. There should now be a nationally consistent approach to “3+2” – however, the question remains of who will prevail.

Salvini and Orbán launch anti-immigration manifesto ahead of EU elections

Hungary’s illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Italy’s hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini launched Tuesday (28 August) an anti-migration manifesto aiming at next year’s European parliament elections, targeting a common enemy.

Will there be the controversial “lane change”?

The sensitive “lane change” term did not come up when Seehofer and Minister of Labour Hubertus Heil (SPD) were presenting the coalition’s proposal. This term means that rejected asylum seekers could then use the opportunity to become migrant workers.

The coalition partners doggedly argued this matter, with the union rejecting it. Officially, the union has pushed this idea through but, in practice, the forthcoming law is intended to prevent rejected asylum seekers who are working from having to leave Germany again. In the bill, it states “we will define clear criteria in the right of residence for an authoritative status of tolerated persons, who make a living through their employment and are well integrated”.

Are there enough foreign skilled workers?

Experts say that in order to meet German businesses’ need for employees, the yearly immigration of skilled workers would need to be in the six figure region. It is debatable whether so many people actually want to come to Germany to work. While Germany is the most popular country in Europe for immigration, most economic migrants from all over the world want to go to the USA.

This is why the Grand Coalition government wants to “win skilled workers specifically for Germany”. In the future, there should be specific promotion campaigns abroad for this purpose. However, this does not solve one problem: in order to receive a work permit, foreign applicants have to demonstrate German language skills. “For me, this is non-negotiable,” Heil said. However, aside from around 100 million people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, hardly anyone in the world is able to speak German.

Source: https://www.euractiv.com/section/central-europe/news/was-steht-im-neuen-einwanderungsgesetz/

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EU in CRISIS: Salvini issues ultimatum to Brussels – ‘We’ll FIRE you in six months!’

Aurora Bosotti — Sun, 07 Oct 2018 07:51:13 +0000

ITALY’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini warned the European Commission his eurosceptic government will “keep going” despite threats to its budget proposals as he issued an ultimatum to Eurocrats “insulting” the country.

Italy‘s eurosceptic leader Matteo Salvini has been involved in an ongoing verbal spat with European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker over the past two weeks.

The pair has repeatedly locked horns over the Italian Government’s refusal to back down from a controversial budget proposal to increase its deficit target for next year.

But with the European Elections scheduled for 2019, Mr Salvini reminded the Commission of the risks of threatening a core member state like Italy: “The Europe of bankers, founded on mass immigration and economic insecurity, keeps on threatening and insulting Italians and their Government?

“Relax, in six months 500 million voters will fire them. We keep going.”

Echoing his coalition partner, 5 Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi di Maio forecast a shake-up in the European political establishment during next year’s elections.

Mr di Maio, who serves as Italian deputy Prime Minister alongside Mr Salvini, warned EU citizens will mimic Italian citizens in demanding change from Brussels.

Speaking to La Repubblica, he said: “There will be a political earthquake at the European level and all rules will change.

“In all EU countries – we can see it from the polls – something similar to what happened during the Italian election will happen. We’ll see with the European elections and it will help us.”

EU news: Salvini warned Italians “will fire” the European Union at the next elections (Image: FRANCE 24•LA 7)

Commenting on the less-than-stellar reaction to Italy’s budget proposals from the EU, Mr di Maio continued: “If the EU wants to talks with us, we’ll set up camp in Brussels and talk for as long as they want to. But if there is any prejudice we have no hope.

“If I have to pick between people who hold grudges against Italy and Italian citizens, I’ll always pick Italians.”

Mr Juncker has insisted that the EC will not interfere, saying: “It is up to Italian policy-makers to find rules and measures that will allow Italy to remain within the agreed budgetary targets.”

Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici however has dismissed this approach and suggested Brussels could hit Rome with its entire power.

Mr Moscovici said: “The Italian Government presented a government budget with a 2.4% deficit not only for this year but over the next three years to come which is a significant deviation to what was committed before.

“It may lead to public expenditure that makes you popular for a while, but who pays in the end?

“The European Commission will exert all of its powers not to impose austerity but in the defence of the Italian and European interests.”

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1028075/EU-news-Italy-Matteo-Salvini-Jean-Claude-Juncker-clash-Commission-budget-latest

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EU summit deal reached after Italy demanded action on migrant crisis

Nina dos Santos, James Frater and James Griffiths CNN — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 08:51:13 +0000

Brussels (CNN) European Union leaders have averted the collapse of a key summit with a deal struck on migration in the early hours of Friday morning, which will see the burden of resettling refugees shared more widely among member states.

The EU will also look into setting up migration centers in countries outside Europe, according to a statement from the EU Council. Italy had threatened to block a deal if migration was not addressed, a diplomat told CNN on Thursday.

The meeting of European leaders, intended to focus on Brexit, was dominated by the issue of how to deal with the arrival of boatloads of desperate migrants attempting to cross into European waters.

At around 5 a.m. Brussels time Friday, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted that leaders had agreed on a joint statement from the EU28 summit that included a settlement on migration.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said the deal took “long negotiation, but from today Italy is no longer alone.”

READ THE MIGRANT DEAL

In a statement, the Council said it had agreed to adopt a “comprehensive approach to migration that combines more effective control of the EU’s external borders, increased external action and the internal aspects, in line with our principles and values.”

“The European Council is determined to continue and reinforce this policy to prevent a return to the uncontrolled flows of 2015 and to further stem illegal migration on all existing and emerging routes,” it said.

It added that more support would be provided to Italy and other Mediterranean countries, and “efforts to stop smugglers operating out of Libya or elsewhere should be further intensified.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May praised the agreement, saying it addressed many issues the UK had previously raised, and would “ensure that people aren’t making these dangerous journeys … in the hands of people smugglers.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said that despite suggestions a deal would be “impossible,” member states had succeeded in reaching a “European solution.”

Migration deadlock

Earlier, in an impassioned speech ahead of the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said migration could be a “make or break” issue for the European Union.

“We cannot leave those countries where asylum seekers arrive to deal with (the problem) alone,” she said.

Merkel is facing considerable pressure at home to reduce the number of asylum seekers Germany accepts and agree to other restrictions on immigration, or risk a collapse of her ruling coalition.

She became the accidental architect of European migration policy in 2015 when she decided to allow hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers that had crossed the Balkans on foot into Germany.

Italy’s new government has closed ports to ships rescuing migrants daring the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from north Africa, and taken a hardline approach on negotiations.

In an interview with CNN this week, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini said “we need to revisit” the Dublin Regulation, which requires asylum seekers to be registered in the first European country they enter — regardless of whether they entered legally or otherwise.

The Dublin rules have put a huge amount of pressure on southern and eastern European nations, where the vast majority of refugees fleeing war and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa first enter the Union, and meant richer countries in north western Europe have borne less of the burden.

In an invitation letter sent to EU leaders ahead of the summit, Council leader Tusk said a failure to ensure full control of Europe’s external borders risked strengthening the hand of newly emerging populist political movements.

“More and more people are starting to believe that only strong-handed authority, anti-European and anti-liberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration,” he said.

“If people believe them, that only they can offer an effective solution to the migration crisis, they will also believe anything else they say. The stakes are very high. And time is short.”

Italian demonstrators hold a banner reading “against fascism, racism and sexism.” Right wing, anti immigrant parties recently took power in Italy.

Desperate situation

Despite a significant drop in the number of people seeking refuge in Europe, thousands of desperate migrants continue to make their way to European shores. Many make the perilous journey by sea.

As of June 6, there had been an estimated 785 deaths on the route this year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said, with the majority of the 33,400 migrants and refugees arriving through Greece and Italy.

This week, a search and rescue ship was stranded in the Mediterranean for five days with 233 migrants on board before it was finally permitted to dock in Malta.

European governments had wrangled over the responsibility for migrants arriving on the continent’s southern shores as conditions on the ship began to deteriorate.

Salvini, the Italian minister, had accused it of sailing under a “fake flag,” and Malta has impounded the ship while an investigation is carried out into whether it breached international law.

According to the International Maritime Organization, the Lifeline sails under a Dutch flag, supporting the ship’s assertion that it is correctly registered in the Netherlands.

Growing concern over migration comes at a time when Europe is already dealing with a lingering debt crisis, a rise in European populism, an escalating trade war with the United States, questions over Washington’s commitment to NATO and faltering negotiations for Brexit.

If Italy blocks a joint statement on these other important issues, the entire EU summit would be rendered ineffective.

CNN’s Atika Shubert, Nadine Schmidt, Laura Smith-Spark and James Griffiths contributed to this report.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/28/europe/italy-eu-summit-migrant-crisis/index.html

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Angela Merkel has two weeks to keep Germany’s centre-right together

The Economist — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 12:53:14 +0000

The chancellor wins time to find a European solution to the immigration dispute rending her political alliance.

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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Germany’s political crisis is about the future of Europe

Wolfgang Münchau — Sun, 17 Jun 2018 02:24:40 +0000

Can you say “No” to a German chancellor when all she is asking you for is 14 days?

There is one man who did. Horst Seehofer, interior minister and chairman of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, has managed to trigger the most serious government crisis Ms Merkel has faced as chancellor.
He wants German border guards to reject entry by asylum seekers registered in other EU countries. Ms Merkel wants a European solution and has asked him to wait until the EU summit at the end of the month.

The 46 CSU members of the Bundestag unanimously backed Mr Seehofer. One of them said Ms Merkel has failed to come up with an EU-wide deal for three years. What difference will two weeks make? The CSU, under pressure from the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, seeks to position itself as tough on immigration ahead of the October Bavarian state elections.

Over the weekend, the situation remained tense.

The conflict could come to a climax this week. Under German law, the interior minister has executive powers that would allow him to impose a ban without approval by the chancellor. If he did, Ms Merkel could sack him, and in doing so, cause the coalition to lose its majority. There may even be new elections. The union between the parties, dating back to 1949, may end.

There is a compromise on the table that could buy a truce for a few days.

However, the unity between Ms Merkel and the CSU appears permanently fractured. This conflict is not about 14 days here or there, but about the CSU’s unilateralism versus Ms Merkel’s support for European integration. It is the essential conflict in European politics of our time.

Ms Merkel has no majority in the country for her liberal refugee policies. She opened the border to refugees in 2015 but without making sure that there was sufficient political and logistic support.

Ms Merkel’s general strategy of procrastination has reached the end of the line. Mr Seehofer wants a firm policy on immigration. And Emmanuel Macron, the French president, demands a response on the reform of the eurozone. And they both want it now.

She is also under pressure from Donald Trump. The US president is openly attacking her on two other areas where she procrastinated. One is her stated commitment to raise German defence spending to 2 per cent of economic output. The other is a reduction in Germany’s excessive trade surpluses. The CSU is now positioning itself as the German Trump party. Markus Söder, Bavarian prime minister, talked about an “end of orderly multilateralism”.

The implication is that Germany should take matters into its own hands. He might as well have said: Germany first.

Ms Merkel is not going to get a broad EU-level refugee deal now. Her best hope lies in a series of bilateral treaties with those EU countries where most of the refugees arrive — Italy, Greece and Spain.

But just think about the possible trade-offs the leaders of these countries would demand: Greek debt relief; an Italian exemption from the eurozone’s budget rules; maybe changes to the statutes of the European Central Bank. Elections are coming up in Greece. The new Italian government has a long list of demands that would drive German conservatives into a state of permanent depression. And Mariano Rajoy, Ms Merkel’s staunchest ally in the European Council, is no longer Spain’s prime minister.

There exists a theoretical pro-European outcome to this crisis. Ms Merkel could get her EU-wide refugee deal and in turn, would accept Mr Macron’s eurozone reform and whatever Italy and Greece will be demanding as well. But it is not hard to see how this could go wrong. The eurozone debate in Germany derailed a long time ago. I see no chance of Germany being able to offer the trade-offs needed for a wide-ranging refugee deal.

A more likely scenario is a strategic alliance between Mr Seehofer and Matteo Salvini, the new Italian interior minister and leader of the League. They are united in their unilateralism. Sebastian Kurz, the conservative Austrian chancellor, might join that coalition of the unwilling.

Many people have admired Ms Merkel’s pragmatism and her managerial style. But the trade-off has been a persistent failure to solve problems.

The photo from the G7 summit of world leaders in Canada, showing her in a defiant posture opposite Mr Trump, is an optical illusion. She is not standing up to anyone, not even to Mr Seehofer.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/82c5ae74-70c6-11e8-852d-d8b934ff5ffa

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The post Germany’s political crisis is about the future of Europe first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Angela Merkel’s comeuppance is Europe’s misfortune

Yaris Varoufakis — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 08:31:29 +0000

No one should be surprised by the position in which Angela Merkel and Europe find themselves today. But only a dangerous fool would celebrate

German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Photo: AP

One of the most common mistakes European leaders make in interpreting US President Donald Trump’s hostility toward America’s traditional allies is to assume that all of this is unprecedented. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“My philosophy is that all foreigners are out to screw us, and it’s our job to screw them first.” Thus argued John Connally, then-US secretary of the treasury, in 1971, in his successful bid to convince president Richard Nixon that the time had come to punish Europe by pulling the plug from the Bretton Woods system.

What distinguishes today’s situation from the one Europe faced in the 1970s is the Weimar-like implosion of Europe’s political centre. In the 1970s, America’s financial assault on Germany, France, and Britain was met by a united European establishment. By contrast, today’s defenders of the European status quo must fight on two fronts: against Trump’s encroachments and, within Europe, against the likes of Matteo Salvini and Luigi di Maio, the rising stars of Italian politics who, despite their parliamentary majority, were denied the right to form a government by the country’s besieged pro-establishment president.

The US announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, while ostensibly aimed at China, was also the latest signal to Europe that the Trump administration’s “America First” rhetoric must be taken seriously. Next came the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which offered Trump yet another splendid opportunity to luxuriate in Europe’s powerlessness, and especially that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Forced to insist that Germany would uphold the Iran deal, Merkel found herself immediately humiliated as one German company after another pulled out of Iran. All were unwilling to challenge US financial might or to forfeit the tax cuts Trump had delivered to almost 5,000 German companies with a combined balance sheet of $600 billion. And, before the Iran shock had been absorbed, the US threatened a 25% import tariff on cars, which would shave at least $5 billion annually from German exporters’ revenues.

The scale of Germany’s difficulties can be comprehended only once their causal link with developments in Italy is grasped.

Just as it is Trump’s aim to overturn the global system from which Germany has benefited for decades, Salvini and di Maio see the disintegration of the euro as a welcome development and a boon to their anti-immigration campaign. Just over three years ago, when I was negotiating on behalf of Greece with the German government to end the combination of unsustainable loans and hyper-austerity that are still crushing my country, I warned my interlocutors at a Eurogroup meeting of eurozone finance ministers:

“If you insist on policies that condemn whole populations to a combination of permanent stagnation and humiliation, you will soon have to deal with anti-Europeanist xenophobes who see it as their vocation to disintegrate the EU”

That is precisely what is happening now. Having vetoed much-needed EU reforms, Merkel’s successive governments guaranteed Europe’s fragmentation. Germany’s establishment media are now referring to the Italian economist, whose appointment as finance minister was vetoed by the president, as “Italy’s Varoufakis”. That moniker obscures a fundamental difference: I wanted to keep Greece in the eurozone sustainably and was clashing with Germany’s leaders in favour of the debt restructuring that would make this possible. By crushing our Europeanist government in 2015, Germany sowed the seeds of today’s bitter harvest: a majority in Italy’s parliament that dreams of exiting the euro.

The causal link between Germany’s two political headaches has an economic basis. Trump understands one thing well: Germany and the eurozone are at his mercy, owing to their dependence on large net exports to the US and the rest of the world. And this dependence has grown inexorably as a result of the austerity policies that were first tried out in Greece and then implemented in Italy and elsewhere.

To see the link, recall the “fiscal compact” to eliminate structural budget deficits that Germany insisted upon as a condition of agreeing to bailout loans for distressed governments and banks. Then note that this pan-European austerity drive took place against the backdrop of excess savings over investment. Finally, note that large excess savings and balanced government budgets mean large trade surpluses—and thus the increasing reliance of Germany, and Europe, on massive net exports to the US and Asia. In other words, the same incompetent policies that gave rise to the xenophobic, anti-Europeanist Italian government also bolstered Trump’s power over Merkel.

Europe’s inability to get its own house in order has engendered a new Italian majority that is planning to expel a half-million migrants, blowing fresh winds into the sails of militant racists in Hungary, Poland, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and, of course, Germany itself. Meanwhile, with Europe too enfeebled to tame Trump, the US will aim to force China to deregulate its financial and tech sectors. If it succeeds, at least 15% of China’s national income will gush out of the country, adding to the deflationary forces that are breeding political monsters in Europe and in the US.

All of this was predictable—and in fact was predicted. So no one should be surprised by the position in which Merkel and Europe find themselves today. But only a dangerous fool would celebrate. ©2018/Project Syndicate

Yanis Varoufakis is professor of economics at the University of Athens.

Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com

Source: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/dcJd94pydQ0TvjaC6FzW5M/Angela-Merkels-comeuppance-is-Europes-misfortune.html

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The post Angela Merkel’s comeuppance is Europe’s misfortune first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.