© 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 Ambition has been replaced by duty, and while a sense of duty is a powerful motive, it is not a good driver for a personality makeover.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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At the height of the German government’s latest coalition struggle, infratest dimap, a well-respected polling institute based in Berlin, dropped a bombshell. For the first time ever, the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a party turning ever more xenophobic, nationalist, and revisionist, has overtaken the Social Democrats (SPD) in a nation-wide poll. With 18 percent of the votes, it now appears to be second only to Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU block.

“The SPD overtaken, now we’re targeting the CDU,” one of the AfD’s leaders, Alice Weidel, gloated on Facebook.

The SPD is being hit particularly hard. According to infratest dimap, it is now down to 17 percent. But all three coalition parties in Merkel’s government are being hammered for the power games they’ve been indulging in over the past several months. The latest example is the squabble over Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic intelligence service; the controversy has badly tarnished the government’s reputation.

It’s a convoluted story, but let’s try to keep it short: it started when Maassen, a critic of Merkel’s open-door policy for refugees in 2015, appeared disloyal to the chancellor in a newspaper interview he gave in early September. His boss, interior minister Horst Seehofer, who fiercely dislikes Merkel and her liberal policies, protected and possibly even encouraged him.

Beware the Bavarian Election

Merkel should have gotten rid of Maassen, but she didn’t dare to: his patron Seehofer is head of the CSU, Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, which is under huge pressure ahead of a regional election in Bavaria on October 14. Seehofer could very well have decided to break up the Berlin coalition.

So instead, Merkel’s junior partner, the SPD stepped in and demanded Maassen’s head for being too soft on the right-wing extremists. However, in a first coalition crisis meeting in mid-September, SPD party leader Andrea Nahles committed a major strategic error: she agreed to have Maassen promoted to state secretary in the interior ministry, just to get rid of him as head of the domestic intelligence service.

What ensued was a huge outcry not only from SPD members but from Germans across the political spectrum—many of them earning far less in total than the pay hike of €2500 a month that Maassen would have received with his promotion.

Nahles backtracked, apologized publicly for her lack of judgment, and asked Merkel and Seehofer to reconsider the Maassen decision. On September 23, the leaders of the three parties met again and decided that Maassen would be transferred to the interior minister as a special advisor without any promotion or pay raise.

Even more remarkably, Merkel also said sorry for getting it wrong. “We thought too little of what people rightly think when they hear about a promotion,” the chancellor said, adding uncharacteristically, “I very much regret that this could happen.” Only Seehofer—the man behind two major crises in only six months that this coalition has been in government—saw no reason to say sorry.

Neither apology nor lack thereof is likely to make any of the three parties regain the trust of the public in a hurry. If elections were to take place this Sunday, Merkel’s conservative block would only be getting 28 percent of the vote—their worst result ever.

Still, the CDU/CSU remains Germany’s largest political force, giving it first chance at the chancellery even if coalition building is becoming ever more complicated. For the SPD, it’s a very different story. According to infratest dimap, Germany’s oldest political party with a proud history of more than 150 years has slipped to third place only just before the Greens.

Exactly 20 years ago, the Social Democrats got Gerhard Schröder elected as chancellor with more than 40 percent of the vote. Now, the chance of ever regaining the chancellery seems remote. The SPD is torn between an urgent wish to leave a coalition government that has caused it so much pain, and an enormous fear of what new elections might mean for the party.

In this decline, the SPD is following the same downward trend that social democratic parties across Europe have witnessed, from France’s Parti Socialiste under Francois Hollande and Italy’s Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party to Greece, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Everywhere, Social Democrats have failed to offer answers to the fears caused by globalization and migration, increasing inequality, rising rents, and low pensions.

Anti-Establishment Message

Parties like the AfD don’t have an answer either (except to keep migrants out), but given the weakness of Merkel’s government, they don’t have to provide solutions. Every single hour that Merkel, Seehofer, and Nahles spent on the Maassen affair helped to reinforce their anti-establishment message.

At the same time, AfD politicians have become very skillful at creating just the right amount of public outrage over their xenophobic and revisionist statements. They are radical enough to keep politicians, the media, and the electorate talking about their message, but not so much that it would rattle their own political base.

Of course, the other party leaders aren’t blind or deaf to the AfD’s success. After the Maassen affair was finally resolved, Angela Merkel pledged to do everything possible to get her government to concentrate on substantive issues. Lars Klingbeil, secretary general of the SPD, even called for a completely new working mode in the coalition.

Good intentions, however, won’t replace the trust that has been lost. Two out of three Germans, another polling institute reported, do not believe that the leaders of Merkel’s coalition will ever work together again in good faith.

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© REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

During his time in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber hasn’t struck many as being presidential material. The mild-mannered leader of the European Peoples Party (EPP), the parliament’s grouping of center-right parties from across the European Union, isn’t known for taking bold stances, or for delivering fiery speeches.

Instead he is known as a bridge builder, and this was the characteristic he chose to highlight on Wednesday when announcing his candidacy to become the EPP’s nominee for the next President of the European Commission, the EU’s top job.

“I will listen, I will try to manage a compromise and then I will lead, this is what I did as a group leader,” he told journalists at a press conference in Brussels. “I want to build up bridges, because I deeply believe that only together we can be strong, otherwise Europe has no chance in today’s world.”

The battle will be waged in just nine months at the next European Parliament election when, under the “spitzenkandidat” process, the nominee of the European political group who wins the most seats will (in theory) become the next Commission president, a position currently occupied by Jean-Claude Juncker. The EPP, the largest group in the parliament, will select its nominee at a convention in November.

Straddling the Middle Ground

Weber’s skill in straddling a middle ground is reflected in his motley crew of allies. A confidant of Angela Merkel, he received the German Chancellor’s endorsement to be EPP nominee right away. But another, more surprising endorsement may be coming soon—that of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Orbán has been a vocal critic of Merkel during the refugee crisis. In recent months he has delivered speeches suggesting he may lead a revolt within the EPP and take his and other hard-right parties out, linking up with parties such as Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) and Italy’s Lega, which have been considered too far-right for the EPP.

There has even been suggestion that the CSU, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s CDU, could leave the EPP and join Orban’s new hard-right European alliance—while staying allied with the CDU domestically.

It is perhaps no accident then that Merkel has chosen to throw her weight behind Weber, a deputy chairman of the CSU. He is a politician representing a Central European brand of conservatism who, like Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in neighboring Austria, is trying to find a middle ground between the nationalist and anti-liberal rhetoric of Orban and the pragmatic pluralism of Merkel.

This has often involved cozying up to the Hungarian prime minister. In July 2013, when the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee issued a report criticizing the erosion of fundamental rights in Hungary, Weber dismissed it as a politically motivated attack against Orbán by leftist parties. He also defended Orbán earlier this year after the prime minister said he had replaced liberal democracy in Hungary with “21^st-century Christian democracy,” saying Orbán is “not a bad European.”

Anti-Migrant Rhetoric

Weber has often parroted the anti-migrant language of Orbán as well, calling on Europe to maintain its fundamental Christian values. In April, Weber tweeted a photo of a Catholic church with a quote from himself saying, “If we want to defend our way of life we must know what determines us. Europe needs a debate on identity and dominant culture.” He has said the EU should enact a total ban on face coverings in the bloc.

Weber was the lead MEP on the EU’s 2008 migrant return directive, and fought hard for interior countries like Germany to have the ability to send migrants back to their country of origin, something that won him favor within the CSU and particularly with its current leader Horst Seehofer, another Orbán ally and a critic of Merkel.

But for those made uncomfortable by Weber’s ethno-nationalist flirtations, he has veered from Orbán’s politics in his steadfast defense of European integration. In June 2014, as Britain’s then-Prime Minister David Cameron came to the EU demanding an end to integration, Weber responded emphatically. “The EU is based on an ever-closer union of European peoples,” he said. “That is set out in the treaties. It is not negotiable for us. We cannot sell the soul of Europe.”

Such strong defense of the European project have won him fans in the more moderate wing of the EPP. It is this balancing act that Weber hopes will make him the nominee the EPP needs at a time when political tensions are threatening to break it apart.

Pleasing Both Sides

He was at pains to please both sides of the EPP divide in his tweets announcing his candidacy on Wednesday. “Europe is at a turning point,” he said. “Today, it’s about standing up for Europe …, because we are being attacked from outside and from within. It’s about the survival of our European way of life.”

However, there are many forces that will work against Weber. Rather than endearing him to both sides, Weber’s fence-sitting could serve to alienate both sides of the party—turned off by either his anti-migration rhetoric or his warm words for further European integration.

He will likely face at least two tough challengers for the EPP nomination—Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator who lost the EPP nomination to Jean-Claude Juncker in 2014, and Alex Stubb, the former Finnish prime minister. Both are expected to also throw their hat in the ring.

Even if he does get the nomination, the biggest battle may be after the election. The national EU leaders in the European Council, which under the treaties have the real right to appoint the president, have said that the Council will not be bound by the spitzenkandidat system. French President Emmanuel Macron has been particularly opposed to the idea, saying the EU erred in 2014 by going along with the new system being pushed by the parliament.

So if he gets the nomination, Weber may find himself having to bridge the greatest gap yet—that between the European Parliament and the European Council.

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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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© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

Drinks and relief were flowing freely last Thursday evening in a beer garden in central Berlin, just across the river from the chancellery. Many of those enjoying a cool beer were German parliamentarians and their staff.

They had sneaked out of the Bundestag while waiting for the last vote on the federal budget—one of the final hurdles between them and their summer holidays. It was a welcome return to business, given that many feared their holiday plans might be in serious jeopardy.

A dramatic dispute over migration among Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU center-right conservative bloc had pushed the chancellor’s fourth-term grand coalition to the brink of collapse. In the end they deferred the row and narrowly dodged a snap election, meaning the summer holidays were back on. But many of the politicians and journalists departing Berlin for the Baltic coast, Bavaria, or further afield are doing so with a sense of dissatisfaction. Even by sedate Berlin standards, the new government is less twinkle- than treacle-toed.

It’s been a year since Germany’s federal election campaign began. Voters punished the CDU/CSU and their coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, at the polls, leaving the chancellor scrambling to form a government. After her first attempt to build a coalition with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens fell apart, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the traumatized SPD to pull themselves together and go back into government. With huge reservations, and six months after election day, they did. Yet now, with barely 100 days in office, the current government has been all but paralyzed by the migration row.

And so President Steinmeier again warned the departing government ministers: stop the political games and get back to work, sooner rather than later. “People expect answers,” he told public broadcaster ZDF in a summer interview. “They want their daily problems to be solved.”

The Real Debate

He’s not the only one impatient at the pace—and priorities—in Berlin. A survey for public broadcaster ARD last week showed that migration, despite all the attention and emotion surrounding the topic, is not among Germans’ most pressing issues. Some 79 percent of those polled say they are concerned there aren’t enough nursing care staff to tend to Germany’s fast-aging population. Some 73 percent want more energy invested in education and schools. And 70 percent are concerned about a failure to address the lack of affordable accommodation in urban areas.

Tweeting those numbers last week, SPD general secretary Lars Klingbeil added: “And now let’s talk about a few other issues in the country, eh?”

These problems are not new. (The demographic time bomb in particular has been coming at us for years. Today, one in five Germans is over 65). But after their worst results last year since 1949, Berlin’s governing coalition parties know their survival next time out depends on delivering palpable improvement on these burning social issues.

With around 36,000 jobs unfilled in the nursing care field, many elderly homes around Germany have imposed a moratorium on new residents. To reverse that trend, a new €570 million plan is offering tax-free bonuses of up to €5,000 for care workers who return to the job—and €3,000 for new recruits.

Despite the huge demand for their services, the rules of supply and demand do not seem to have any effect on their pay. Studies show German care workers (mostly women) are poorly organized and subject to individual pay deals often agreed outside union collective bargaining. The result is that their profession is hugely unattractive, with hourly earnings of €10-14 an hour. That is well below the €17/hour German average—and this for shift-work with significant physical and mental demands.

Given how quickly Germany is aging, Berlin’s plans to add more care workers seem modest: the government promises to fill 13,000 extra jobs by 2019, just a third of the existing gap.

Addressing the lack of affordable housing will be no easier. Berlin has reintroduced a tax credit for home builders and buyers and, in addition, has promised to make €1.5 billion extra available to build social housing. But far more intervention, and greater coordination with the regions, will be required to reverse the trend of 2017, when the number of social housing units actually built shrank by six percent.

In 2017, a federal government report noted how a 50 percent boost in social housing spending in 2017 compared to the previous year “brought no corresponding rise in the building of social apartments,” even though rising rents are putting the squeeze on Germany’s low- and middle-income earners. Experts say that’s because government cash injections are often swallowed up by growing land and construction prices and low interest rates.

Many fear Berlin’s new tax subsidy for house buyers/builders, to a value of up to €12,000 per year, could also miss the mark, driving up prices rather than bringing into the property market some of the 55 percent of Germans who rent. And as Der Spiegel reported, the scheme will end up benefiting wealthier Germans who can afford to buy far more than low-income families who cannot. What’s more, the decentralized nature of Germany’s government leaves Angela Merkel with few levers to influence the pressing housing issue beyond tax subsidies and cash injections.

Education, the third priority for German voters, is another turf war. Post-war rules ensured that education was a matter for the 16 state capitals rather than the federal government. But for more than a decade, Berlin put state capitals under pressure to meet new budget deficit rules, ie cut school spending significantly. In a bid to reverse this, state governments have agreed to relax post-war rules to accept almost €11 billion in federal investment funds.

Plans are underway to renovate moldy schools and kindergartens, increase the number of all-day schools, and boost funds for improved digital infrastructure in education as well.

But the clock is ticking. The SPD has vowed to review the progress in a year’s time to date on the government’s program for the country. After squandering the year since the election, Germany’s grand coalition politicians should enjoy their holidays and come back well-rested. Come autumn, they’ll need to hit the ground running.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

After her third late-night crisis meeting in four days, Chancellor  Angela Merkel looked understandably worse for wear on Monday when she announced an eleventh-hour deal with her rebellious Bavarian sister party to tighten migration policy and save her government.

The agreement emerged from a last-ditch attempt to prevent Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) from implementing its own controls on their border with Austria against Merkel’s wishes. That threat had sparked an almighty row between Berlin and Munich that risked the rupture of the CSU’s seven-decade alliance with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

“After a tough struggle and some difficult days, we’ve found a really good compromise,” said Merkel. The deal salvages her chancellorship and fourth-term coalition, and will see her interior minister Horst Seehofer, the CSU leader, stay on in Berlin after he threatened to resign on Sunday evening.

“We agreed after very intense negotiations,” he said after the meeting. “This is a clear agreement to prevent illegal immigration in the future on the German-Austrian border.”

They agreed on so-called transit centers at three major crossings along the German-Austrian border, where asylum-seekers will be directed into closed camps; those who have been previously registered in other EU countries will be returned, as long as Berlin has an agreement with those countries (more on that here).

This week’s dramatic escalation caught some by surprise, but the dispute had been simmering since the 2015-16 “refugee crisis,” when Merkel–fearing a humanitarian disaster–declined to close German borders to more than one million asylum seekers on their way on the “Balkan route.” The CSU, based in Bavaria, the state where most asylum seekers were arriving, demanded a tougher stance. But it eventually fell in line behind Merkel. After both parties were trounced in last September’s federal election, the CSU fears a repeat drubbing in October’s state election in Bavaria and is scrambling to position itself as tough on migration.

Not Over Yet

But there are more challenges to Merkel’s government-saving compromise: It now has to be approved by the third party in her coalition, the Social Democrats (SPD).  Three years ago the center-left SPD rejected a similar proposal as “arrest zones.” On Tuesday, Katarina Barley, the federal justice minister who is from the SPD and will be involved in drafting legislation for the facilities, said she had more questions than answers. In particular: what happens to people who avoid the three border crossings and choose another entry point to Bavaria along the 819 kilometer green frontier?

The transit camps, whatever form they take, are not part of their coalition agreement and are highly unpopular with SPD left-wingers. On the other hand, after disastrous elections last year for Germany’s big parties, a tortuous six-month interregnum, and now the near government collapse, there is little appetite in Berlin for more turmoil—and far less for a snap election.

After weathering the refugee crisis on the frontlines in 2015, the CSU hopes its voters will forgive it for originally backing Merkel as hundreds of thousands entered the country through Bavaria.

Though asylum applications have dropped off significantly (68,000 so far this year compared to 746,000 in all of 2016), the CSU is confident that, by extracting a law-and-order pound of flesh from Merkel, it can win back voters from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Following Orders

Seehofer stays on as interior minister and CSU leader, but at the mercy of the real strong man in Bavaria: state premier Markus Söder, another key figure in this government crisis. Seehofer now faces the difficult task of trying to restore some sort of working relationship with the CDU and Angela Merkel (after reportedly saying, in the throes of the dispute, that he “can’t work with this woman” anymore); but he must also follow orders from Söder in Munich if the approaching election requires further muscle-flexing.

Germany’s asylum agreement looks like a victory for the CSU over the chancellor. The fuzzy “transit center” euphemism marks a radical departure from Merkel’s liberal “we can manage this” approach to the refugee crisis in 2015.

Facing a darkening public mood on asylum as attacks committed by refugees have garnered high media attention–particularly after a high-profile murder-rape committed by a young Iraqi asylum seeker–Merkel yielded to her coalition partner to keep the peace. She saved her coalition and maintained her hand on the tiller.

But she is a diminished figure. Her party rallied to support her during the CSU’s attacks, but her authority is no longer absolute. It seems only a matter of time before an ambitious challenger overtakes her or, pre-empting such a move, she stands down in Berlin.

On the other hand German voters, while uncertain about Merkel’s record on migration, are unsure of whether there is any realistic alternative–or one that would be any more reliable. A poll last week showed that even in Bavaria, she was more popular than local strongman Markus Söder. In her own party there are many figures who feel best-suited to inherit the Merkel mantle, but none where the public agree.

Even during a crisis like this in Germany, it still seems to hold true that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

It hasn’t been easy to follow German politics over the past two weeks. Angela Merkel’s CDU and its more conservative, Bavarian sister party, the CSU, have been holding “crisis meetings” nearly every day. Late Monday night, however, an agreement was reached that will stabilize the situation, at least temporarily, and prevent the collapse of the German government.

Here’s a shortish version: The ostensible core dispute was about how to handle “secondary migrants,” migrants who have already applied for asylum in another EU member-state, but who then make their way to Germany. (For context, fewer than 20,000 of these people have entered Germany so far this year; and from January to May 2018, 78,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, compared with 745,000 in the full year of 2016.) According to EU rules, the “Dublin regulation,” the first member-state an asylum-seeker enters is generally responsible for evaluating his or her asylum claim.

The CSU has always taken a harder line on refugees. Horst Seehofer, the party boss and, since April 2018, interior minister, wanted to turn away the secondary migrants at Germany’s border, rather than to try and often fail to return them once they were already in Germany, as is currently the case. Merkel rejected his plans, for fear that unilateral German action would push other member-states to tighten their borders too—the Schengen dominoes, as it were, would fall one by one. In mid-June she asked for more time to find a European solution. The CSU begrudgingly gave her two weeks, until the EU summit.

So Merkel went to an all-night European Council meeting on Thursday, and brought a “European solution” home to Berlin. The EU was to set up “controlled centers” inside the EU—it’s not clear where—to evaluate asylum-seekers claims; member-states would then take in migrants deserving of protection on a voluntary basis. The EU would “explore the concept” of closed camps in North Africa and the Balkans, and stump up more money for Libya and Turkey to deal with refugees themselves. Most relevantly for the spat with Seehofer, Merkel secured a number of bilateral deals with other member-states, including Spain and Greece, who agreed to take back secondary migrants from Germany, largely in return for financial support.

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Was that enough to satisfy Seehofer? Were Merkel’s bilateral agreements wirkungsgleich (equivalent in effect) to Seehofer’s plans to simply turn away secondary migrants at the border? When the CSU leader threatened to resign on Sunday, it didn’t look like it. But another crisis meeting late Monday night brought about a fragile compromise between the two conservative sister parties, and Seehofer has decided to stay in office.

There are three points to the CDU-CSU deal. First, a new “border regime” on the German-Austrian border will prevent the arrival of refugees for whom “other member-states are responsible.” Second, there will be “transit centers” at the Germany border, where secondary migrants will be held, processed as if they never really entered Germany, and quickly deported to their member-state of arrival thanks to bilateral deals. Third, secondary migrants coming from member-states with whom Germany has no bilateral deal, such as Italy, will be turned away at the German-Austrian border under the terms of an agreement with Austria. Crucially, that deal has yet to be agreed upon.

A debate has exploded in Germany about the merits of the conservatives’ compromise. This is surely not the last time the CSU will challenge Merkel in order to score political points ahead of Bavarian state elections in October.

And will the plan work? Secondary migrants, some of whom risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean in a rickety smuggler’s boat, may not be deterred by spot checks on foreign-looking people at the German-Austrian border. They could cross another border into Germany, or sneak in through the forest, or allow themselves to be taken to a transit center only to disappear somewhere into the country. Transit centers are not prisons. If they were, Merkel’s coalition partner SPD wouldn’t accept them. As it is, Merkel’s grand coalition partner may have trouble accepting this tougher line on migration. Watch this space.

Consequences for the EU

What’s already clear is that the CDU-CSU compromise has consequences for the EU. Germany has no deal to return secondary migrations to Italy, the largest source of such migration. It is unlikely to get one, as Italy’s xenophobic interior minister, the far-right Lega leader Matteo Salvini, wants to stop migrants from entering Italy in the first place, not take more of them from Germany.

Nor is Austria eager to welcome the refugees Germany can’t return to Italy. The right-wing government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has already issued a statement: “Should this agreement become the German government’s position, we see that as prompting us to take action to prevent negative consequences for Austria and its population. The Austrian government is therefore prepared to take measures for the protection of our southern border in particular.” Said plainly, that means Vienna is ready to turn back migrants on its borders to Italy and Slovenia—who, again, aren’t eager to be “waiting rooms” for migrants who want to move north.

It is a pernicious myth that Merkel believes in a Europe of uncontrolled migration, where refugees fleeing terror and economic migrants alike are free to go where they please. Nor did she “open Germany’s borders” in 2015. That September, with hundreds of thousands of people walking to Germany from Hungary, the decision she made was to keep the borders open, because Merkel believed in free movement within Europe and Germany’s humanitarian responsibility.

Since then, Merkel’s governments have cut deals abroad to reduce migration and tightened conditions for asylum-seekers in Germany. “Wir schaffen das” always meant “we can handle this”, not “we can do it!” It was less a progressive rallying cry than a determined appeal for calm and focus, and by and large, it worked.

Now, Merkel’s deals with both EU leaders and the CSU depend on voluntary support from member-states that don’t want to give it. Efforts to reform the Dublin regulation or distribute migrants across the EU are going nowhere. At the same time, the EU’s ramshackle migration infrastructure looks shakier than ever, despite irregular migration numbers falling.

Europe’s deals with third countries also raise troubling questions about how long people must stay in a camp, and under what conditions. And the talk of opening up legal immigration avenues for economic migrants is mostly just talk.

Merkel’s vague compromise with Seehofer is another step toward harder European borders, internal and external. That’s the trend in Europe these days.

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© REUTERS / Michele Tantussi

The signs of trouble emerged earlier this week, when Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of the CSU announced he would delay the presentation of his “migration master plan” – a blueprint for Germany’s strategy for handling migration going forward.

The CSU wants Germany to turn away asylum-seekers at the border if they’ve already been registered in other European countries, or if they’ve already been refused asylum in Germany.

Merkel, however, has rejected the idea of Germany taking unilateral action (this is the only point in Seehofer’s master plan, incidentally, which Merkel does not support). She wants a European solution, or failing that, bilateral deals with countries like Italy. Either of those would allow for a legal, orderly way of returning migrants. A unilateral rejection of asylum-seekers at the border, on the other hand, could trigger a domino effect in which other countries close their borders, too. That would ultimately push the burden squarely onto countries like Greece and Italy, which have already taken in a large share of migrants and refugees.

Merkel also argues that unilateral action could make the entire migration process far more complicated than it already is. If pre-registered asylum-seekers are rejected at the German border, other European countries might simply stop registering asylum-seekers. That would make the entire process more chaotic, not less. That certainly isn’t in Germany’s interest.

That is why Merkel is fighting for more time – two weeks to hammer out a shared solution with Germany’s European partners. But her critics argue that she has already spent years trying to do so. The CSU sees its credibility at stake with a key regional election looming this fall; it is keen to appear tough on migration, an issue that continues to roil the country. The case of an Iraqi asylum-seeker suspected of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl, Susanna F., and the ongoing scandal surrounding Germany’s refugee authority – accused of incorrectly approving thousands of asylum cases – have heightened tensions in recent weeks. The CSU wants to show its voters in Bavaria that it‘s taking action.

The rift among Merkel’s conservative bloc escalated so dramatically on Thursday that many in government circles were discussing the possibility of a vote of no confidence that could oust Merkel. A Bundestag session was interrupted as CDU and CSU lawmakers held separate meetings.

A high-ranking leader of the CSU described the conflict with the CDU as “very serious.” There were rumors of the two breaking their union, an alliance that has stood for decades. That would lead to an historic shift in German politics. According to German newspaper Welt, a CSU parliamentarian went as far as telling a CDU lawmaker that Merkel doesn’t care about the German “Volk,” or people.

What’s at Stake

The debate is as much about individual policy as it is about larger principles. German conservatives have long complained that Angela Merkel has abandoned the center-right in favor of the center. Under her leadership, the military draft was abolished. Her government introduced a minimum wage. Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power and hard-working German tax payers have “bailed out” other European countries. Gay marriage is now legal. All of these decisions were controversial amongst Christian Democrats, but none of them are as significant as Merkel’s handling of the refugee crisis. Many members of her own CDU caucus support Seehofer’s hardliner approach.

The situation is all the more dangerous for Merkel because the conflict ultimately isn’t about the individual policy decisions. It’s about her handling of the refugee crisis as a whole. Merkel is now trying to buy time in order strike a compromise that’s favorable to German partners abroad and the CSU at home. While the conservatives argue among themselves, meanwhile, the other parties profit. The Social Democrats have called on the CDU and CSU to stop arguing and start concentrating on governing the country. The Free Democrats  have called for a vote on Seehofer’s policy in order to demonstrate to everyone just how divided the conservative bloc is.

At this point, creating a compromise that allows both Merkel and the CSU to save face will be incredibly difficult. CSU leaders have staked their credibility on winning this battle months before Bavarian elections in October. If Merkel fails to find a compromise abroad in the next couple of weeks and the CSU doesn’t back down, she can either give in to Seehofer’s demands or enter an open confrontation that could well cost her the chancellery.

There is a more immediate concern, as well. Seehofer could use the nuclear option of going above Merkel’s head and make an executive decision on turning asylum-seekers away at the border. Merkel would then face an impossible choice: She could let him get away with implementing a policy she has clearly rejected or fire him. If she lets him get away with it, her authority will disintegrate. If she fires the leader of the Christian Social Union, the government will collapse. Either way, her position would be under threat.

Angela Merkel is in serious trouble, but there is still good reason to believe that she will survive the crisis. Her critics have an incentive to appear tough on migration, but not to topple their own chancellor. Merkel continues to be popular, after all. Her critics need her to appeal to the center; she needs her critics in order to appeal to more conservative voters. In the end, Merkel is most likely going to stay in power by finding a way to make everyone a little unhappy, but not too much.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

More than 100 days after September’s general election in Germany, Sunday marked the start of Chancellor Merkel’s second attempt to form a new government and secure a fourth term.

Framing the long-delayed talks, she warned in her New Year’s address of a “growing rift” in Germany, between those who see their country as strong and successful and those with concerns of being swamped by immigrants or excluded from society.

“These are the two realities of our country … and both of them motivate me,” she said.

It was a well-timed observation: despite steady economic performance and a record low jobless rate, a representative survey in the national daily Welt found just a third of Germans (36 percent) were optimistic about the future, down from 51 percent in 2014.

The German leader said a priority for her fourth term – if she secured one, of course – would be to rebalance the social market economy, Germany’s postwar model of tying economic success to social cohesion. How she plans to do this looms large over coalition talks in a supposed news blackout. No leaks, no interviews, no tweets. Those were the rules.

The blackout lasted 24 hours while the talks – and German federal politicians’ full pay go-slow – roll on.

If all goes well, the unprecedented interregnum is not likely to end until Easter. Merkel is angling an encore of her last coalition between her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the more right-wing Christian Social Union (CSU) from Bavaria, and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). They have spent the last four years governing together, but they are deeply wary of each other after voters in September dealt them all their worst results since 1949.

This week’s talks – or, more accurately, talks about talks – are about seeing whether they can find a common basis for formal negotiations in the weeks ahead. After looking like losers on election night, each party is battling to emerge the winner. But not everyone can win and, for the risk-averse German leader, these are tortuous times.

On election night, after a drubbing from voters, a grim-faced SPD leader Martin Schulz vowed to rebuild his party in the opposition. When Merkel’s coalition talks with two other parties collapsed, however, he yielded to party demands for open-ended negotiations. The SPD will have the last word as the party rank-and-file will vote on any agreement to form a coalition government, so Merkel knows she will need to offer substantial concessions to the SPD. They want greater spending on welfare and infrastructure as well as reform of the two-tier health system.

“In education, health, and old-age care and much more, we are not a modern land,” said Schulz ahead of talks.

But SPD plans to loosen Germany’s fiscal belt – financed by taxes on top earners – are unpopular with the rising CDU conservative camp and their beloved balanced budget. They were also spooked by the 12.6 percent scored by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), on foot of security fears linked to the refugee crisis. For that reason, CDU right-wingers see security as the only justification for additional spending.

Pressure on All Sides

The CSU also saw disastrous results in September. Meanwhile, the party has closely watched the rise of conservative Sebastian Kurz in neighboring Austria, who sparked controversy after building a coalition government with the Austrian far-right FPÖ. The Bavarian conservatives have copied many of Kurz’s winning policies, and at their annual new year conference, they began flying political kites: tighter immigration controls and expedited deportations of criminal refugees.

That tone has aggravated the SPD, but the center-left knows not to push back too hard against the predominant law-and-order mood, particularly because some voters believe the government lost control of its security in the 2015-16 refugee crisis.

A tougher nut to crack will be Europe. As former European Parliament president, Martin Schulz has made clear he backs French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for reforming the EU, pushing deeper European integration with a eurozone finance minister and budget.

Foreign minister and ex-SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel flouted the interview ban to underline the importance of Macron’s reforms for his party.

“It is time Germany answered this,” he told German television, noting his party had a clear position on pushing forward with European integration. “We think it is right to invest more in the EU – in research, development, and education … The CDU/CSU has been quite reserved to date.”

The limited CDU/CSU enthusiasm stems from concerns that some of these reforms will be seen as a burden on German taxpayers. Since the euro crisis, pretty much every EU proposal is now framed here as a burden on the German taxpayer.

In the coming days, expect to see the SPD press its advantage as Merkel’s last option before the unappealing thought of fresh elections. But also expect spirited resistance from the Bavarian CSU. The party is facing a crucial state election in September, and it can no longer risk appearing soft on immigration to its conservative voters.

This takes us to the greatest question mark: whether the latest coalition talks in Berlin will ever lead to a new government. After nearly 16 weeks, we still don’t know, nor do German voters. According to a poll on Sunday, one in three voters think the current round of talks will fail. And only a narrow majority – 54 percent – think a third grand coalition would be good for Germany. Ambivalence, thy name is Angela.

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© REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

It’s no secret that trouble has been brewing within the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) ranks for months. But the rumble of discontent in Berlin, Munich, and Brussels has grown to a loud chorus. And party members are asking themselves a fundamental question: Do we still believe in our chancellor? Even those in Merkel’s closest circles have sensed a paramount shift. Trust, it seems, is evaporating.

At the same time, Merkel’s sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), has been gradually tightening the screws on Chancellor Merkel. They have consistently shifted the focus away from single-issue politics toward a broader, more fundamental conflict.

Bavarian Minister President and CSU chairman Horst Seehofer made clear the rift has long since ceased to be about the refugee crisis. Instead, he says, average voters are no longer willing to play along with Berlin’s politics. Cancelling a trip to Russia and the opening of an Oktoberfest celebration in Berlin, he fueled the impression that Germany is in a state of emergency.

For Merkel, on the other hand, everything that she says or does is under the microscope and will likely be turned against her in the run-up to next year’s federal elections. Her trips abroad, the meetings with the world’s rich and powerful – all that had bolstered her image at home in the past. Now it serves as proof that she is out of touch with Germany’s problems.

A chancellor’s popularity does naturally slump during the course of his or her time in office. And given the state of events, an approval rating of 34 percent is still surprisingly high. Crises of confidence are a familiar phenomenon as well. Yet this time, something is fundamentally different: With her handling of the refugee crisis, Merkel herself has become a problem in the eyes of many.

She was always a force of cohesion in the CDU; now, she has divided her party and politics across the country.

The recent state elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin were catastrophes for the CDU. Germany’s capital will soon be governed by a coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Left Party, and the Greens. There is much to suggest that the debate around this particular constellation (which could create an alternative to Merkel on the federal level) will intensify in the near future. And the dangers for Merkel are considerable. For the first time, criticism of her and her policies has called into question her chances of staying in power.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race?

Still, it seems Merkel has decided to fight. She wants to turn the tables and defend the very political dominance that she has helped to build. Indeed, Merkel offered an olive branch to her critics shortly after the Berlin election by publicly admitting mistakes in her approach to the refugee crisis.

Merkel is not known for swift reactions. Her wait-and-see policy is her trademark. Some call it patience, borne out of her temperament and the lessons she has learned along the way to the top. And mostly, waiting has paid off for Merkel. But with the CSU and her SPD coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), attacking from both sides, many Germans feel frustrated and misled, and the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has deftly filled the gap.

Merkel long believed the grand coalition she had built with the SPD was always a sure bet, with her squarely in the driver’s seat. Even the AfD seemed like a bargaining chip. The party was too small to be a real threat but large enough to make other small alliances impossible. The Berlin elections revealed that dynamic might be coming to an end.

There are, of course, a good number of CDU members, if not the majority, who still stand with Merkel. But they are uncomfortably quiet, and for good reason: How do you address a power struggle within your own party? One lawmaker admitted soberly that the CDU has “lost its ability to run campaigns because it’s been so damn comfortable over the past few years.” Merkel was there, and all was well.

That is no longer the case. Bavarian parliamentarians say the atmosphere among the party’s base is disastrous. Even those who had long been sympathetic to Merkel have distanced themselves from her on the refugee crisis.

CSU lawmakers seem to make new demands of the chancellor everyday, ranging from the political to the absurd: Merkel should announce an upper limit on the number of refugees allowed into the country; Merkel should openly admit she was wrong; Merkel should promise it will never happen again; Merkel should rejoice in the fact that fewer refugees are arriving.

Merkel has already addressed many of these points. She admitted, for example, that every country has its limits and that 2015 would not be repeated. Yet no one seems to be listening. This lack of receptiveness is polarizing in itself. To Merkel, it’s proof that her critics don’t actually pay attention to what she says. To them, it’s proof the chancellor doesn’t mean what she says.

Battle at Home

Above all, Merkel must take care of Germany. She likes to shine on the global stage alongside Putin and Obama, but she hasn’t once visited Passau. The party’s base isn’t necessarily frustrated with her coin phrase “Wir schaffen das,” or, “We can handle this.” They took exception to her statement, “If we have to apologize for showing a friendly face in emergencies, then this is not my country.”

To many, it sounded like the chancellor was picking and choosing her country, and not the country picking her. The old suspicion in the CDU – that Merkel was not “one of us” after all – resurfaced. Her calm and rational approach has appeared brittle and inept in the face of rising nationalist emotions.

Merkel has always had good sense when things get really tough, and the current situation is no exception. She has distanced herself from “we can handle this.” She does not want to appear stubborn, but also doesn’t want to backpedal. After striking the refugee deal with Turkey, she and her cabinet have worked quietly to draw up similar agreements with countries like Egypt to stem the flow of refugees. She continues to bet on facts, not emotions.

“If we start to escalate our language, only those win who express things even more clearly and simply,” she said in a speech to the Bundestag. “And if we start to play their game, if we push aside or even ignore facts, responsible and constructive answers become impossible.”

Seehofer is right when he says that the dispute between the CDU and the CSU has moved beyond the refugee crisis. It’s about the big picture, about trying to find German or even European answers to global questions. The CSU was seriously considering going its own way in next year’s general election, putting forth its own program and candidate. At the latest CSU congress, however, Seehofer reconsidered. “There are differences of opinion, but let’s be a voice of reason,” he said. “After all, it’s about winning the election and fighting the specter of a left-wing coalition.”

And Merkel? She seems to be determined to take up the struggle – the struggle over the future of what used to be Europe’s most successful popular party.

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