Merkel ‘must do migrant U-turn after poll rout’

GERMAN chancellor Angela Merkel is under renewed pressure to do a U-turn on her controversial ‘open door’ refugee policy after her party was hammered into third place in a key election in her home state.

The anti-immigrant, anti-EU Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won nearly 22 per cent of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday.

Mrs Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats were left trailing on 19 per cent, their worst ever score in the state.

The centre-Left Social Democrats, Mrs Merkel’s partners in Germany’s national government, remained the strongest party in the state with 30.6 per cent support.

The result led the newspaper Die Welt to comment: ‘Germany now has what has never existed since the end of the war: an extreme-Right party.’

Sunday’s election was fought solely on the chancellor’s immigration programme, which has seen more than a million refugees settle in Germany in a year. Her allies are now demanding changes, fearful of being decimated at next year’s general election.

Andreas Scheuer, secretary general of the Christian Social Union, Mrs Merkel’s allies in Bavaria, said: ‘We need a cap on refugee numbers, expedited repatriation processes… and better integration measures.’

Mrs Merkel – at the G20 summit in China – took responsibility for the outcome, acknowledging that national issues, particularly refugees and their integration, had dominated the campaign.