© REUTERS/Boris Roessler/Pool

Over the coming weeks, German chancellor Angela Merkel will need to reinvent herself. Against her sober, cautious nature, she will have to reach out to the public to explain her vision of Germany’s future. She will have to draw the big picture and appeal to people’s emotions as well as their common sense. In other words: she needs to re-establish trust in her leadership to rally the public around her faltering chancellorship.

Does she have it in her? Doubts are in order. A leopard does not change its spots, and Merkel doesn’t believe in visions. Also, she has never been an orator who is able—or even aspires—to play on an audience’s emotions. After 13 years in office, she is immensely experienced but also quite tired. Ambition has been replaced by duty, and while a sense of duty is a powerful motive, it is not a good driver for a personality makeover.

Yet nothing less than Merkel’s leadership is at stake. On October 14, a regional election will take place in the state of Bavaria; two weeks later, the state of Hesse follows. Her conservative bloc is expected to suffer losses, and part of the blame is certain to be laid at her door.

At the same time, the election in Bavaria, in particular, offers some hope of a new start for Merkel. There, it is not her own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is standing, but its more right-wing “sister party,” the Christian Social Union (CSU).

The CSU has governed Bavaria with an absolute majority for nearly all of the past 60 years, but this time, polls say, it will only be getting between 33 and 35 percent of the votes. Of course, the blame game has already started, and one culprit has already been identified: Horst Seehofer, head of the CSU and interior minister in the federal government in Berlin.

Troublemaker Seehofer

Twice over the past four months, Seehofer nearly brought down Merkel’s coalition—out of personal resentment against the chancellor, because he was opposed to her open-door policy for refugees from the beginning, and because he thought that a hard stance in Berlin would benefit the CSU at the polls.

Like in the Greek myths, however, the doom that Seehofer had been trying to avoid is coming down on him all the harder. Bavarians did not appreciate Seehofer’s brinkmanship, and the Catholic wing of his CSU did not approve of the way he instrumentalized the refugee issue. Short of a miracle, Seehofer will have to step down as party leader of the CSU on Sunday. That means that Merkel may also be able to get rid of him as interior minister.

With new personnel and some clear words about her overall strategy and goals, Merkel could try to re-launch her government. It may be her last chance to do so—even within her own party, her authority is crumbling.

At the end of September, her CDU/CSU Bundestag caucus went against her wishes and voted in a surprise candidate as group leader. Ralph Brinkhaus, a finance expert virtually unknown outside the corridors of the Bundestag, replaced Volker Kauder who had been Merkel’s very close aide and confidant for nearly 20 years.

Ever since, Merkel’s critics are growing bolder. One of them is Norbert Röttgen, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Bundestag, whom Merkel fired as environment minister back in 2012. In a well-publicized interview, Röttgen spoke about a systemic crisis in Germany that would worsen if Merkel did not change her approach. He also proposed putting a limit on the chancellor’s term of office—not exactly a subtle hint.

The End of Merkel?

Merkel has repeatedly confirmed that she wishes to remain chancellor for a full fourth term until 2021, and she has also made it clear that she believes the party chairmanship and the chancellery go hand in hand. This makes the CDU’s party congress in early December crunch time for Merkel, as delegates will vote on their leadership. Should they decide not to renew Merkel’s mandate as CDU chairwoman, it is hard to see how she could remain chancellor.

So far, it appears unlikely that Merkel will be replaced. Two Christian Democratic politicians have announced their candidature for the party chairmanship, but both are nobodies who aren’t considered to stand any chance at all.

More credible competitors are still hesitant about entering the race. For Merkel, the most dangerous is Jens Spahn, who serves as health minister in her coalition. Spahn, who (unusually) recently visited US national security advisor John Bolton in Washington, is very popular with the more conservative part of the party base and he has always made clear that he wants to become chancellor one day.

How will this play out? Most probably, Merkel can still pull it together, if she puts her mind to it. But the congress of the Junge Union, the youth organization of CDU and CSU, last weekend offered a taste of a different future. Merkel received good applause for a good speech. But Spahn, calling out for “a patriotism in keeping with our time,” was feted with standing ovations.

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© REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

On Wednesday, Bavaria opened the doors on seven “anchor centers.” The German word Anker is an acronym that leaves little doubt as to the centers’ purpose: arrival, decision, and return. The CSU hopes similar facilities will open elsewhere in Germany, but other federal states are skeptical and have yet to sign up. Opening one of seven such anchor centers, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder talked about using a “carrot and stick” approach to migration, providing arrivals with a decision within 18 months on whether they can stay or must go.

Aware of growing public skepticism and security concerns over migration, Bavarian officials say these centers will expedite asylum applications of people who have little chance of remaining, or those whom officials deem a threat. Asylum seekers with a good chance of securing residency, meanwhile, will be offered a chance to find work or enroll in training schemes or integration programs.

Integration Barriers?

But critics are asking how much integration is possible for people living in an out-of-town barracks behind mesh fences. The migration NGO Pro Asyl has called the anchor centers an “obstacle to integration by government decree,” with a “catastrophic effect” on those housed there. Meanwhile another NGO, Save the Children, attacked the fenced-in centers as a potential risk to the safety and development of their youngest residents.

“The same rights apply to a refugee child as any other children, such as access to education, healthcare and … protection,” said Susanne Krüger, head of the organization in Germany. The centers are controversial in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in Berlin, too. Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, a government commissioner responsible for children’s rights, said he was concerned these were not guaranteed in the anchor centers. He has publicly questioned whether the Bavarian anchor centers in their current form conform with Germany’s commitments to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Bavarians have knocked back all the critics, with CSU leader Horst Seehofer (also federal interior minister in Berlin) saying he was certain the anchor centers will be a “big success.” The opening of the centers comes ahead of a crucial state election in Bavaria in October. After decades in power, the CSU finds itself well short of enough support to retain its absolute majority in the state parliament. It hopes the new facilities have been launched in time to show wavering voters that the CSU is taking a tough law-and-order approach to migration, three years after more than one million people arrived in the country, largely through Bavaria.

On Wednesday, Bavaria’s state interior minister Joachim Hermann pointed out that the camps were all housed in pre-existing asylum centers. What’s new is that, instead of being distributed to municipalities, up to 1,500 residents will live in each center full-time, alongside asylum and other related agencies that process applications.

The camps are not closed and residents will be allowed come and go, he noted, while children will receive education inside the camps rather than at local schools. But Hermann made no bones about the purpose of the facilities: authorities had been instructed to take “visibly swift action,” he said, against migrants who break the law. Later this week, Bavaria will increase financial incentives for voluntary repatriation of migrants as well.

The new measures complement federal interior minister Horst Seehofer’s migration “master plan,” a 63-point paper presented last month to optimize and standardize asylum procedures. Seehofer had threatened to resign in Berlin and collapse the government unless his blueprint was adopted. In the end he struck a compromise with Chancellor Angela Merkel to deport migrants who have already filed for asylum elsewhere in the EU—if the other country agrees. Now he is engaged in talks with neighboring Austria and Italy to make the deal come about.

New Rules for Refugees

Wednesday was not just the launch of Bavaria’s new anchor centers, it also coincided with the start of new family reunification quotas, allowing up to 1,000 relatives of refugees with subsidiary (limited) protection to come to Germany each month. Those with subsidiary protection–people, often Syrians, who are not personally persecuted but nevertheless face a threat of serious harm in their home country—had not been able to bring relatives over since August 2015. Now a fraction of them will be able to.

Still, the opposition parties criticize a law they say makes international refugee law subject to arbitrary upper limits. But to keep her alliance together in Berlin, Chancellor Merkel has allowed her Bavarian allies considerable autonomy on the emotive asylum issue ahead of October’s election. Her other coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are unimpressed by the new centers—not because they go too far, but because they are what interior spokesman Burkhard Lischka called a “bluff” with little practical change. “Just swapping out a few signs is silly,” he said.

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