Spiegel on AfD win: Alone in Berlin: How Merkel Has Gambled Away Her EU Power

[MikeWB]

Alone in Berlin: How Merkel Has Gambled Away Her EU Power

With her refugee policies, Chancellor Merkel has isolated Germany to a greater degree than any of her predecessors. The Balkan Route has been closed down against her will and many EU leaders believe her overtures to Turkey are delusional. By SPIEGEL Staff

There were times when interactions between the German chancellor and European Council President Donald Tusk were more congenial. When Angela Merkel entered the conference hall at the European Council building in Brussels, Tusk would bow deeply and clasp Merkel's hand. He would then kiss it so intimately that even Merkel, who is used to all manner of obsequiousness, would look in quizzical confusion at the former Polish prime minister's bowed head.

On Wednesday, Merkel got to know a different Tusk. Once again, he sent Merkel a greeting, but this time he opted to use Twitter instead of his lips. He sent out a tweet thanking the countries of the Western Balkans for closing their borders to refugees and "implementing part of EU's comprehensive strategy to deal with migration crisis."
It was not exactly a gallant move from Tusk. For weeks, Merkel has been trying to prevent the closure of the Balkan Route, arguing that Europe cannot leave Greece alone to deal with tens of thousands of desperate Syrians trying to escape the civil war in their country. Three weeks ago, when Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann announced his country would only accept a limited number of asylum-seekers each day -- an announcement that led to border closures up and down the Balkans -- Merkel shook her head with concern. The move, she said, was "not helpful."

And now Tusk. The man who was only able to rise to the European Council presidency with Merkel's backing has now ambushed her.

It is yet another incident that demonstrates Merkel's loss of power. The chancellor has played a variety of roles in Brussels throughout her career. She began as a clumsy novice, but as a result of the euro crisis she ultimately became the most powerful leader in Europe. Now, however, she has isolated Germany in the European Union to a greater degree than any chancellor before her.

Germany has always had a special role in Europe. Helmut Kohl emphasized modesty in Brussels to reduce European fears of a newly dominant Germany in the wake of reunification. Merkel, by contrast, was not afraid of taking a leadership role and pushed through her strict austerity policies. In the end, though, she stopped short of throwing Greece out of the euro zone against the will of France and other southern European member states.

Defection to the Enemy Camp

Now, the fissure runs through the entire continent. Germany and France are estranged, Eastern European member states have joined Austria in an anti-Merkel alliance and European Council President Tusk has defected to the enemy camp.

Merkel has remained true to her convictions -- one has to grant her that. She has withstood domestic pressure -- primarily exerted by the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) -- and she has resisted the pressure of Faymann in Austria and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. With three important German state elections approaching this Sunday, she has also resisted pressure from CDU campaigners, who are not expecting a glorious showing. If one judges politicians by how well they stick to their principles, even when it gets uncomfortable, then Merkel has been impressive in recent weeks.

But what Merkel's people describe as rectitude, the rest of Europe sees as an attempt to spread the costs of her noble-minded blunder across the entire European Union. The fences that have now been built do not just prevent refugees from moving through the Continent -- they're also symbolic of resistance to German presumption.

When Merkel stepped before gathered journalists late on Monday night following the special EU summit in Brussels, she spoke of a "breakthrough" in the refugee crisis. But that claim too was an affront. The same Merkel who has brandished her moral fortitude by criticizing border closures and barbed wire fences is nevertheless prepared to make herself dependent on a Turkish government that is transforming its country step-by-step into an autocracy.

Nothing reveals Merkel's hypocrisy more than her handling of the Balkan Route closure. With only a few hundred migrants a day now reaching Germany, Merkel is perhaps the greatest profiteer of the border closures. But it is the result of policies imposed by her political adversaries. Not only that, but these policies were originally supposed to receive the European stamp of approval at Monday's summit. For the summit's closing document, Tusk proposed the following statement in reference to the Balkan Route: "This route is now closed." The sentence is a statement of fact, but Merkel nevertheless refused to sign on. Doing so would have been a public admission of failure.

The result was a tenacious battle over terminology. When EU member state ambassadors assembled on Sunday afternoon to prepare the summit, the German representative Reinhard Silberberg protested. But Tusk's cabinet chief Piotr Serafin remained firm, Silberberg communicated in a classified cable to Berlin that evening. The countries affected along the Balkan Route, he wrote, "expect a clear indication of support from the ... European Council."

Higher Powers

When European heads of state and government arrived in Brussels on Monday, the quarrel had not yet been resolved. Before he entered the Council building, French President François Hollande said: "This route is closed." Later, an argument erupted between Faymann and Merkel. A rift could only be avoided by way of compromise. The final document ultimately stated: "Irregular flows of migrants along the Western Balkan route have now come to an end." It makes it sound as though higher powers stopped the migrants in their path.

The price for the cosmetic improvement was high. In return, Eastern European member states received the guarantee that no further demands that they accept refugees -- neither from Greece nor from Turkey -- will be made. For Merkel, that is not a positive result.

She continues to insist that border closures cannot solve the refugee crisis, instead placing her hopes on the deal with Turkey. To take part in the negotiations, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived in Brussels on Sunday evening for a meeting with Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of Europe.

The meeting itself was unusual enough, with many EU countries unimpressed by Merkel's diplomatic offensive. But when it became known that the Turks had presented a completely new proposal during the confidential meeting, rumors began making the rounds that Merkel was trying to hoodwink the other EU member states.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy only learned of the Turkish paper after he landed at the Brussels airport. When it was distributed at the beginning of the summit, Luxembourgian Prime Minister Xavier Bettel took a photo of it with his smartphone and sent it to his aides so they could quickly examine it.

The mood was tense when the leaders gathered for a late lunch at 3 p.m. Most made it clear that they would be unable to agree to a deal without having first perused the Turkish proposal in detail. Before long, many began to suspect that the paper had actually been authored by Merkel's chief advisor on European affairs, Uwe Corsepius -- and not by the Turks. Merkel vehemently denied the allegations. But the incident serves to demonstrate just how deep mistrust of the Germans has become.

Open Rupture

For Merkel, the new plan presented by Turkey was a coup. For the first time, Ankara agreed to reaccept refugees who had fled across the Aegean to Greece. In return, the EU would agree to take Syrians from Turkey -- initially in accordance with a complicated formula but ultimately a fixed quota. In addition, Turkey is to receive an additional €3 billion ($3.35 billion), relaxed visa requirements -- as early as June, if possible -- and a commitment to accelerating Turkey's long dormant EU accession negotiations.

It is unclear whether the plan will ever be implemented. For that to happen, Merkel needs the confidence of her European partners -- confidence that she has spent the past several months eroding. French President Holland only refrained from rejecting the Turkish proposal outright at the Brussels summit because he wanted to prevent an open rupture with Merkel.

For France, though, lifting Turkish visa requirements as early as this summer is out of the question. "We won't be able to push that through here," says one Hollande advisor. Thus far, Turkey has only fulfilled half of the 72 conditions demanded by Brussels for the lifting of visa requirements. Ankara, for example, still stubbornly refuses to recognize passports from Cyprus, which is an EU member state. Furthermore, only travelers with biometric passports are allowed to enter the EU without a visa. Turkey, though, has yet to produce travel documents that fulfill the EU's strict criteria.

Paris is not the only place where resistance to visa relaxation can be found. "We cannot exchange a refugee wave for a visa wave," says Andreas Scheuer, general secretary of the CSU. "Otherwise we'll go from the frying pan into the fire."

"My fraction is very skeptical of complete visa freedom for Turkish citizens," adds Manfred Weber, head of the conservative European People's Party group in European Parliament. "There will be no refugee rebate."

The acceleration of Turkish accession negotiations is even more controversial than the visa issue. Cyprus is categorically opposed to the opening of additional negotiation chapters. The northern part of the Mediterranean island has been occupied by the Turks since 1974, and they don't recognize the Republic of Cyprus as a sovereign country. Even aside from that, the approach to Turkey comes at an awkward moment. On the Friday before the Brussels summit, the Turkish government raided the editorial offices of the opposition paper Zaman and took over control.

'We Can't Trust Turkey'

The core element of Turkey's proposal is also legally questionable. It would be a violation of European and international law to simply send migrants back to Turkey after they had made it across the Aegean. Asylum-seekers may only be sent back to countries where a fair asylum hearing is guaranteed. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas told SPIEGEL this week that "we don't yet consider Turkey to be a safe country of origin nor a safe third country for asylum-seekers." The solution currently looks to be that of Greece declaring Turkey to be a safe third country. Then, most refugees could be sent back.

Many of Germany's EU partners would love to see Merkel fail. They see the border closures along the Balkan Route as tangible policy results and Merkel's diplomatic dance with Turkey as delusional. "We can't trust Turkey," says a source close to Hollande.

Still, one has to give Merkel credit for her attempt to make Europe more humane. She believed that if Germany accepted refugees, other countries would be infected by the generosity bug. Her policy hinged on a belief that humanitarianism could be contagious. It is a nice idea, and perhaps not totally absurd. Even if half of the Syrian population had made its way to Europe, could not the EU's population of 500 million have handled it?
One significant problem with Merkel's refugee policy was the timing of the crisis. When she opened Germany's borders to the refugees trapped in Budapest last September, she was at the zenith of her power. But in Europe, her austerity demands had turned many countries against her -- and here she was imposing her refugee principles, a curious mixture of Protestant parsonage and German sensibility, on the Continent.

Merkel failed to realize soon enough just how little Europe was willing to accept. The price for her policies is not just the rise of a new right-wing populist party in Germany and a German society that is more divided and disgruntled than it has been in years. She also created a Europe that is no longer united.

By Julia Amalia Heyer, Peter Müller, Ralf Neukirch, Christoph Pauly, René Pfister and Christoph Schult


http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/refugee-crisis-policies-have-merkel-on-defensive-in-europe-a-1081820.html

[rmstock]

She used to be a STASI girl in East Germany, then known as the German
Democratic Republic or GDR.  It was Honecker land and rumors go that
Vladimir Putin made his KGB career in that country, with the specialty
of bribery of high placed officials through compromised photo's.  A
couple of West German politicians were taken down in this manner. The
crown `hole in one' shot was of course Willie Brandt :

"Around 1973, West German security organizations received information
that one of Brandt's personal assistants, Günter Guillaume, was a spy
for the East German intelligence services. Brandt was asked to continue
working as usual, and he agreed to do so, even taking a private
vacation with Guillaume. Guillaume was arrested on 24 April 1974, and
many[who?] blamed Brandt for having a communist spy in his inner
circle.[citation needed]"

Old successful cold war methods don't disappear. Another bribery
specialist is this Jack Abramoff, a neocon Zionist and Talmudist, who
had a Washington D.C. based brothel of underaged boys.  The only reason
that Angela Merkel, who by the way speaks fluent Russian, is still
seated as the German Bundes Chancelor, is because of such bribery
methods. How is it possible that a girl from a former soviet state and
communist nation, where religion was verboten, has become the party
leader of the German CDU, a center right Christian party ?

[MikeWB]

Even if she was KGB/Stasi/Communist, she turned to be virulently anti-Russian. She's also a hard-core leftist who pushes anti-white dogma. I heard her say that Germany must accept refugees because that's a "christian value". Heh.

She's finished now. The only question left is who will replace her.

[MikeWB]

Daily Mail piles on...




German voters' crushing verdict on open-door migration: Angela Merkel is punished in crucial state elections as far-Right party wins big vote with call to stop flow of refugees

    * Three German regions vote for state legislatures on 'Super Sunday'
    * Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt all vote
    * Angela Merkel's party set to lose support in the wake of refugee crisis
    * Exit polls suggest the Christian Democratic Union has lost in two states
    * Anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AFD) set to win seats at all three
    * For more of the latest on Angela Merkel visit www.dailymail.co.uk/merkel

By Sara Malm for MailOnline and Allan Hall In Berlin For The Daily Mail

Published: 04:36 EST, 13 March 2016 | Updated: 18:06 EST, 13 March 2016

German voters turned to the far right in droves yesterday in a damning verdict on Angela Merkel's open door border policy.

In regional elections she was humiliated by the anti-immigrant AfD – Alternative for Germany – party.

Formed just three years ago, it has surged in popularity following Mrs Merkel's decision to roll out the red carpet for more than a million migrants.

Frauke Petry, who leads the Eurosceptic party, has suggested German border guards should open fire on illegal immigrants.

Analysts said the regional poll – in which Mrs Merkel's ruling Christian Democrats lost two out of three states – was a 'worst case scenario' for the embattled chancellor ahead of a general election next year.

The timing made it a virtual referendum on Germany's refugee policy. It will also be seen as an indictment of the failure of Europe's ruling classes to acknowledge the public's fears about migration.

Mrs Merkel's welcome for arrivals from Syria, other parts of the Middle East and North Africa, has caused chaos across the continent.

Initially, the incomers were greeted by crowds of well-wishers.

But, faced with the sheer numbers, public opinion soured. And there was outrage when gangs of migrant men were involved in organised sex attacks on women in Cologne and other cities on new year's eve.

One by one, EU states have thrown up border fences to stop the flow of arrivals – leading to the slow collapse of the Schengen passport-free zone.

Austria is one of several countries to limit numbers in defiance of Brussels.

Mrs Merkel, who has failed to win support for a Europe-wide quota system to share out refugees, last week masterminded a deal for Turkey to take back migrants landing in Greece.

In return, Ankara would be handed up to £3.9billion, EU countries would accept quotas of Syrian refugees from Turkey and all 75million Turkish citizens would be allowed visa-free travel around continental Europe.

On Thursday Mrs Merkel insisted that imposing a limit on refugee numbers was a 'short-term pseudo-solution' and that only a 'concerted European approach' would bring down numbers.

Germany has attempted to return economic migrants to 'safe' countries such as Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro but still risks being overwhelmed.

Last night millions of voters showed they have lost faith in the chancellor's policies.

Early exit polls suggested AfD had won 23 per cent of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt, finishing third.

The party fares better in former Eastern Germany where scepticism of liberal refugee policies is stronger.

But its double-digit score in two other states, Rhineland and Baden-Württemberg, was potentially more significant.

This suggests middle-class voters are deserting the Christian Democrats and other establishment parties.

Baden-Württemberg, which is home to Porsche and Daimler, was won by the Green Party. Mrs Merkel's CDU lost a large slice of its vote in its former stronghold, plunging to a historic low of 27 per cent.

AfD has seats in five regional parliaments and in the European Parliament.

But its huge gains on 'Super Sunday' will reinforce fears that Germany is shifting to the right after decades of middle-of-the-road consensus politics following the Nazi period.

The tabloid Bild newspaper ran the headline yesterday 'AfD shocks Germany!'.

Last night Mrs Petry, who chairs AfD, said: 'We are seeing above all in these elections that voters are turning away in large numbers from the big established parties and voting for our party.'

She said voters expected AfD to offer 'the opposition that there hasn't been in the German parliament and some state parliaments'.

The far right victory came despite attacks by leading establishment politicians.

Mrs Merkel described AfD as a 'party that does not bring cohesion in society and offers no appropriate solutions to problems, but only stokes prejudices and divisions'.

Sigmar Gabriel, her vice-chancellor, insisted that gains for AfD would not change his government's stance on immigration.

'There is a clear position that we stand by: humanity and solidarity,' he said. 'We will not change our position now.'

Sigmar Gabriel of the Social Democrats accused AfD of having a 'linguistic affinity' with the Nazis.

The Tagesspiegel newspaper said that the party drew in racists and anti-semites and suggested many former members of the neo-Nazi NPD 'and other right wing parties are attracted to it'.

The publication of an outline of the migrant deal has raised concerns in the UK that it represents a step toward Turkish membership of the EU.



FAR RIGHT PARTY MAKES GAINS IN GERMANY: WHO ARE THE AFD?

Germany's AfD – Alternativ für Deutschland – started out at as an anti–EU, anti–euro party sceptical of the power of Brussels and the 'superstate' project beloved of most of the Fatherland's citizens.

Its destiny was almost certain to be that of a protest party until the refugee crisis came along and propelled it on to the national stage in a way no–one predicted.

Founded in 2013 with the intention of ending bailouts for poor southern EU countries, it focused on criticizing the government's immigration policies last year and has not looked back.

AfD is seen by many in Germany to be linked to Pegida, a xenophobic movement which draws thousands onto the streets of the city of Dresden every Monday.

Critics refer to Pegida as 'Nazis in pinstripes' – an allusion to the middle-class disaffected voters it is drawing into its ranks.

The current leader of AfD is an East German-born female scientist. But the parallels with Angela Merkel end there.

Frauke Petry believes that German police should 'if necessary' shoot at migrants seeking to enter the country illegally.

She was lambasted for saying so in January but a poll found nearly 30 percent of the electorate agreed.

Mrs Petry, 40, took over as party chief in July 2015 after an internal power struggle that saw the party's co-founder and first leader, Bernd Lucke, ousted.

Under Mrs Petry AfD has moved to the right and shifted focus from eurozone issues to migration.

It became the first anti–euro party to win seats in a German regional parliament – in Saxony in 2014 – and went on to win seats in four other states' parliaments.

Its latest big win makes it more powerful than ever.



However George Osborne insisted yesterday that the Government would prevent Turks moving to Britain.

'We have a veto over whether Turkey joins or not,' the Chancellor told the BBC. 'We can set conditions and we have made it absolutely clear that we will not accept new member states to the European Union and give them unfettered free movement of people unless their economies are much closer in size and prosperity to ours.

'I don't frankly think Turkish accession is on the cards any time soon. We could, if we wanted to, veto it as other countries could.'

Last week Iain Duncan Smith, a Brexit-backing Tory cabinet minister, warned that the silencing of debate on immigration had been 'terrible for the British people'.

Around 110,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in the first seven weeks of this year, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Last year it took from January until July to reach that figure.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3489936/Angela-Merkel-set-punished-voters-open-door-refugee-policy-Germany-s-Super-Sunday-state-elections.html

[MikeWB]

Germany Wakes Up to Politics Trump-Style as AfD Takes on Merkel

If you think Donald Trump has some outrageous ideas, wait until you meet Germany's AfD party.
The Alternative for Germany, to give the party its full name, has shaken up the country's consensus-driven politics with headline-grabbing policies that include telling Germans to have more children to avoid the need for immigration. Frauke Petry, the AfD's co-leader, has said that police must "prevent illegal border crossings, using firearms if necessary."
Like Trump, her rhetoric hasn't damaged AfD support but rather struck a chord with those disgruntled with the establishment parties, in particular nabbing voters unhappy with Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy for refugees. The party surged to record support in Sunday's regional elections, taking seats in all three states that voted and boosting its representation to half of Germany's 16 state assemblies. The AfD had its strongest showing in Saxony-Anhalt with 24.3 percent, making it the second-biggest party in the former communist eastern state, according to TV projections.
The rise of the AfD in Germany mirrors growing support for populist politicians such as National Front leader Marine Le Pen in France and Trump, who has called for banning Muslims from emigrating to the U.S. Like Trump, Petry spars regularly with the media that follows her every word. One German newspaper even ran a quiz asking readers to attribute statements to Trump or Petry.
'Fundamental Problems'
"We have fundamental problems in Germany that led to this outcome," Petry said on broadcaster ARD Sunday to explain the party's surge. "Now we want to force the other parties into a substantive debate."
The German political establishment is having none of it, vowing instead to band together to keep the AfD out of government. Petry has responded by saying her party plans to take on an opposition role to push AfD policies in the face of what they see as a cartel of established politicians.
The AfD began in 2013 out of opposition to the euro and taxpayer-funded bailouts of countries such as Greece. Co-founder Bernd Lucke, an economics professor who focused the party on the euro, quit last year after losing a power struggle with rivals including Petry, 40, an East German-born chemist. The AfD failed to win seats in the German parliament in 2013, though it entered the European Parliament the following year. It still wants to dissolve the 19-nation euro area.
Holocaust Guilt
Several senior party members are defectors from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union who view her as pulling the party to the political left. Petry has urged Germans to have three children to reduce the need for immigration and suggested German policy is driven by Holocaust guilt.
The party wants restrictions on political asylum, stronger enforcement of existing laws -- including deportations of refugees who don't qualify for asylum -- and demands that the government "protect the national identity," according to a resolution passed at a party convention in November. Its campaign platform for Baden-Wuerttemberg calls the governing parties "saboteurs of our state and our society" and says the AfD is the voice of the "awakening resistance of the bourgeoisie."
The AfD result in Saxony-Anhalt is the latest upset in a region that has a tradition of voting for radical groups. Support for the anti-capitalist Left Party peaked at 24.1 percent in 2006, while surveys over the next five years consistently showed about 5 percent or more backing for the far-right National Party of Germany, or NPD. The German People's Union, or DVU, won seats in the regional assembly in Magdeburg in 1998 after taking 12.9 percent with a nationalist, anti-immigration platform.
Along with the surge in the eastern state, the AfD won double-digit backing in the two western regions that voted Sunday. The party received 15.1 percent support in Baden-Wuerttemberg and 12.4 percent in Rhineland-Palatinate, according to projections. The threshold to receive seats in 5 percent.
"The AfD is now more established and will probably have more staying power than its predecessors," Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, said in a note. But even after doing well in regional protest votes, the party "would remain light years away from any position of influence."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-13/german-anti-immigration-party-surges-to-record-high-in-votes