The significant issues of integration and the deportation of failed asylum seekers were mentioned by Ms. Merkel who has turned more hard line on the migrant crisis in recent weeks claiming that she does not want to see a repeat of a year ago. The Chancellor affirmed that the European Union (EU) migrant deal with Turkey was a step in the right direction toward tackling the migrant crisis.
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CSU leader Horst Seehofer, Bavarias governor, told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the situation for the conservatives is highly threatening. He was quoted as complaining that his repeated demand for a change of course on migrant policy hadnt been heeded and said Sundays disastrous result was a effect.
The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party clinched nearly 21 percent in its first bid for seats in the regional parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday.
Earlier this year, it was expected that the CDU would help form the region’s coalition government along with the centre-left Social Democratic Party.
A senior aide to Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging unity in the German leader’s conservative bloc amid recriminations over an embarrassing state election performance. He was quoted as complaining that his “repeated demand for a change of course” on migrant policy hadn’t been heeded and said Sunday’s “disastrous” result was a effect. “So the quarrels between the CDU and CSU will continue, and the Social Democrats will turn even more strongly against the Union to have a chance in the national election campaign”.
Although the former Communist state is Germany’s poorest and least populous, it carries a symbolic meaning as it is home to Merkel’s constituency Stralsund.
Merkel’s bloc leads national polls, although her own popularity ratings have dropped from stellar to respectable. She hasnt yet declared whether she will seek a fourth term next year, but theres no obvious alternative.
At national level, the AfD is now polling at 14 percent, a gain of 10 points in the year since Merkel threw open German borders to a mass influx of asylum seekers.
It basked Monday in its latest success.
Beatrix von Storch from the AfD said her party’s recent successes in the polls prove there is a change toward nationalist politics happening in Germany.
“This ignorance is exemplary”, she said. It is not just ignorance.
Petry, whose party has no prospect of going into government in the foreseeable future, complained that its rivals “still think they can label AfD as an undemocratic party”.
AfD, founded in 2013, won 20.8 percent of the vote, compared to CDU’s 19 percent; both finished behind the Social Democratic Party, which won 30.6 percent. “The chancellor’s job for autumn will be to reconcile the CDU party base with her own leadership”, he said.
“The AfD is not an option for Germany but an indictment of Germany”, Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the German media after the results came in.
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“Apparently many voters don’t realise, or tacitly accept, that the AfD. has failed to clearly distance itself from the far-right”, he said.
