Merkel’s Vulnerabilities Resurface

This past week, a month ahead of Germany’s national elections, Chancellor Angela Merkel boldly stated that she has no regrets about her decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees during the 2015 migrant crisis. Despite her public confidence, though, Merkel’s government is struggling to cope with the consequences of that fateful decision—and she may soon face another difficult choice that will test her commitment to it. As the Financial Times reports:

Germany is facing a surge of up to 300,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees joining family members already living in the country, a prediction that will increase scrutiny of Angela Merkel’s liberal refugee policy just three weeks before federal elections.

Thomas de Maizière, interior minister, called for a temporary curb on family reunifications, which expires next March, to be extended, describing the number of relatives eligible to enter Germany as “huge”.

An estimate provided to the Financial Times by the German foreign ministry said an additional 200,000 to 300,000 Syrians and Iraqis could come to Germany to join their relatives. That is on top of the more than 1m refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015-16.

The current predicament is a problem of Merkel’s own making. In March 2016, her government kicked the can down the road by implementing a two-year ban on family reunification for a large class of asylum seekers. With that deadline looming in the distance—and hundreds of thousands stuck in limbo—Merkel is deflecting questions about whether she would extend the ban or allow another massive influx of migrants into Germany.

Needless to say, this is not a conversation that Merkel wants to be having before the election. Her main opponent, Martin Schulz, has been reluctant to press her on her immigration and integration policies, and she has tried to neutralize those political vulnerabilities by pointing to her subsequent crackdown on migrant flows after the initial surge in 2015. But the coming decision on family reunification will put the issue back in the spotlight, pitting Merkel’s original open-arms policy against the tougher tack she has taken in its aftermath. Public opinion favors a restrictive approach: according to a recent survey, 58% of Germans are opposed to refugees’ relatives being allowed to legally reunite with their families in Germany.

Migration is not the only area where Merkel remains vulnerable. The Chancellor recently declared her support for a common Eurozone budget and finance minister, both proposals offered by Emanuel Macron to deepen the EU’s monetary union. But those initiatives are opposed by many in Merkel’s own ranks, who reject greater fiscal integration with the Eurozone’s less responsible members. From the FT: 

While Ms Merkel’s comments might have gone down well in Paris, they are less welcome to many in Berlin. Many members of her centre-right CDU party — and its potential coalition partners after the election — want strict rules on how burdens can be shared across the bloc, making sure that German resources are not used to bail out less fiscally prudent countries. […]

The real opposition to further eurozone reform would be the rightwing of the CDU party itself. The chancellor would also have to contend with the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, whose members have been among the fiercest critics of pan-European economic policies such as the ECB’s mass bond-buying quantitative easing programme.

It’s not just Merkel’s own party that is irritated by her support for a Eurozone budget. The Free Democratic Party (FDP), which could conceivably act as a kingmaker in a coalition with the CDU, is also opposed; its leader Christian Linder called such talk “irritating” and stated, “The interests of Paris are not those of Berlin.” Such tight-fisted opposition to fiscal burden-sharing is prevalent in Germany, and could help Merkel’s rivals at the polls.

But will either of these controversies be enough to endanger Merkel’s re-election? Alas for the Chancellor’s rivals, the answer is probably no: Merkel still enjoys a comfortable polling lead, and her Social Democratic opponents are, if anything, even more supportive of welcoming migrants and increasing Eurozone integration than she is. Merkel’s past embrace of migrants and her present support for Eurozone reform may not doom her electorally—but they do present long-term governance challenges that could haunt her in a fourth term.

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