Merkel weathers refugee crisis in her re-election bid
Barring something seismic and unpredictable, Angela Merkel, Germany’s longserving chancellor, will be reelected Sunday.
That hasn’t always been clear. Scarcely a year ago, pundits were preparing her political obituary.
In September 2016, the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union fell to third place in an election in her home district. Overtaking her center-right bloc was Alternative for Germany (AfD), the nationalist, anti-immigrant party that has pilloried Merkel for her decision in 2015 not to close the country’s borders to about a million refugees seeking entry into Germany.
The vote took place a year after Merkel, together with Austrian leaders, agreed to admit asylum seekers trapped in Hungary. A referendum of sorts on that decision, the state election delivered a harsh verdict: It was the first time in modern Germany that Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, and its Bavarian counterpart, the Christian Social Union, had been outdone by a far-right party.
The vote unfolded between the decision of British voters to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump. Signaling a rejection of globalization and an embrace of nativism, both events ran counter to Merkel’s worldview.
Then, 12 people were killed in a December attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, by a failed asylum seeker known to federal prosecutors. After several international setbacks, this was a blow to the heart of Germany, unfolding just across the Tiergarten from the Chancellery, where Merkel had presided for 11 years.
Last year, Frauke Petry, AfD’s chairwoman, declared Merkel “finished.”
Not so much. Her party enjoys a double-digit lead across surveys leading up to Sunday’s vote.
Many remain critical of Merkel’s response to the refugee crisis. She has been heckled on the campaign trail over this issue.
But she seems unlikely to suffer at the polls as a result. Here are five reasons why. 1. The numbers are under control
After about a million migrants entered Germany in 2015, only 280,000 claimed asylum in 2016. Just 90,389 followed suit in the first half of 2017. And deportations have increased.
Migrants haven’t stopped coming of their own accord. Rather, the lower figures are a result of enhanced border security in the Balkans, international dealmaking and stricter domestic rules in Germany.
In March 2016, Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia — three of the thruways between Greece and coveted asylum destinations in northern Europe — announced that their borders had been closed. Balkan countries that had sheltered migrants on a favored path to countries like Germany were now locking migrants out. Only illegal passage continued.
That same month, the EUTurkey deal took effect. Under the agreement, Ankara agreed to take back migrants from Greece, while some Syrians already in Turkey would be dispersed throughout the EU. The agreement slowed the torrent of migrants in the summer of 2016 but has since faltered, particularly with the Turkish government’s crackdown after the July 2016 coup attempt.
Still, the deal is something of a model for new negotiations between European officials and African governments.
2. Merkel has stuck to careful messaging
One of her stock lines on the campaign trail is to thank citizens for their help in responding to the difficult months of 2015 and 2016.
It is a gesture to the German idea of Willkommenskultur, or “welcome culture,” represented most vividly in Germans who showed up at train stations and asylum centers in the fall of 2015 with water bottles, blankets and toys for new arrivals.
By thanking them, Merkel acknowledges that the refugee influx created a strain but admits no wrongdoing.
3. A prosperous economy blunts the impact
Immigration is an important issue to German voters — the most important issue, some polling suggests.
Surveys by Infratest dimap, a polling agency in Berlin, indicate that social injustice and poverty, pensions, education and unemployment are also foundational for voters. In fact, they rank as more important than domestic security and crime.
On many of these measures, Germany is doing well.
Unemployment stands at 3.7 percent. Real wages are rising. Germany reported a budget surplus in August of 18.3 billion euros, or about $21.6 billion.
The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, but inequality is not as severe as it is in the United States and Britain.
4. The chancellor’s opponents have faltered
Merkel’s main rivals are not popular enough to threaten her leadership.
After the AfD scored strong showings in local and state elections, it faltered as its leaders did battle against one another. As the AfD sank in the polls in the spring of this year, the Social Democrats soared under the stewardship of Martin Schulz.
5. Germany is a country steeped in its past.
Whether or not the past dictated her decision-making, it offered a powerful narrative encasing her refugee policy.
At a meeting in Brussels in October 2015, Merkel — the first German chancellor from the former communist east — is said to have countered Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s call for fences across Europe by offering, “I lived behind a fence for too long for me to now wish for those times to return.”
Her biographers also point to her Christian upbringing — her father was a Lutheran pastor — in accounting for her resolve.
Merkel did not cast Germany’s obligation to refugees displaced by the Syrian War as a way of atoning for Nazi crimes.
But the 1951 Geneva convention on refugees was a response to the Holocaust, a point not lost on citizens of a country still coming to grips with its dark past.
This is evident in debates about the possibility of German patriotism and the existence of a unified national culture.