Why German chancellor Angela Merkel is on the defensive

Angela Merkel's party suffered a humiliating defeat in her home state earlier this week against the insurgent AfD, a far-right party fueled by anti-immigration sentiments. 

|
Markus Schreiber/AP
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (r.) and Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel attend the budget 2017 debate at the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin on Wednesday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has had a difficult year.

In the face of the Syrian refugee crisis, much of Europe seemed to close itself down against the wave of immigrants. But Ms. Merkel stood firm, opening the door for refugees in Germany.

Even as she stands by her policy, her party now seems to be on the ropes because of it. And her popularity as a chancellor is reaching dangerous lows.

Merkel's party, the center-right Christian Democrats, suffered a resounding defeat Sunday in a local election in Merkel's home state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The Social Democrats won 30.6 percent of the vote, and the Christian Democrats scored a record low of 19 percent in the state, according to the BBC. But of more concern to Merkel and the CD is the second-place surprise winner: the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which received 20.8 percent of the vote.

“That is a slap in the face for Ms. Merkel,” Frauke Petry, the leader of the AfD, told the public broadcaster ZDF, according to The New York Times. “That is a slap for the chancellor in her home state.”

The AfD was formed only three years ago and has steadily gained support from inflamed anti-immigrant feelings in the country, exacerbated by Merkel's open border policy. Germany has taken in more than a million refugees in the past year and a half, though that rate has decreased recently. While some 238,424 new arrivals came to the country between January to July, many of those came early in the year. Since then, the rate has dropped to around 16,000 per month, according to the Associated Press.

The defeat of the Christian Democrats by the AfD was a surprise, but the upstart party is part of a greater shift toward the right seen across Europe, with fears of terrorism, support for isolationism, and strong anti-immigrant rhetoric becoming the norm. Increasingly, security has become the top concern for voters throughout Europe, as The Christian Science Monitor reported in August:

As security shoots to the top of voter concerns, surpassing even unemployment, socialists across the continent find themselves in a bind. While they are under pressure to move rightward to bolster their security credentials among voters, doing so also runs the risk of undermining their core ethos, by targeting the sorts of minorities that they seek to represent.

'After the general political trend and general economic trend, security is the third shock to the European left’s system. It places it again in a very contradictory position,' says Paul Vallet, an associate fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. “The left has to undergo some sort of soul-searching, to see whether its traditional dogmas are still adapted to a very radically shifted security situation, especially with respect to terrorism.”

The once-popular chancellor, affectionately referred to as "Mutti" ("Mom") by supporters, is now dogged by polls like one released earlier this week that says that 50 percent of Germans do not want her to run for a fourth term in 2017, according to Reuters. The same poll found that two out of three Germans were unhappy with how she has handled the refugee crisis.

Despite the low ratings, the most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes, is still expected to run in and win the 2017 election, according to analysts. But the recent defeat in her home state has put her on the defensive, admitting the AfD would be a "challenge" to overcome.

In an address at the Bundestag Wednesday, she assured immigration skeptics that "Germany would remain Germany, and so would all that is dear to it." She denied a rumor that the influx of refugees would lead to welfare cuts for native Germans, according to Deutsche Welle.

She also warned other parties against stooping to the tactics of the AfD, saying that if the inflammatory rhetorical style of right-wing populism became the norm, "only those who rely on slogans and seemingly easy answers" would ever win an election.

"When we join in with this behavior where facts are ignored or brushed aside, then a responsible and constructive debate is no longer possible," she told the Bundestag.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why German chancellor Angela Merkel is on the defensive
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2016/0907/Why-German-chancellor-Angela-Merkel-is-on-the-defensive
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe