After the latest blow to Angela Merkel this weekend, with her party coming in third place to an anti-immigrant party in a state election, analysts are questioning both how much longer the German chancellor’s refugee policy can stay intact and how long she can stay in power.
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Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel’s Social Democrats won Sunday’s election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Merkel has her parliamentary constituency.
The AfD has targeted Merkel’s CDU and the SPD ever since the chancellor decided a year ago to keep Germany’s borders open to refugees arriving from war zones such as Syria and Iraq via Hungary and Austria. Integrating many and deporting those who have no claim on asylum is the right course, she said. It is a major success for the AFD party ahead of next year’s national poll. In state elections, her party, CDU, came behind the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, in her home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Allies of Ms. Merkel in the German coalition government, such as the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), have said that Sunday’s election results are a defeat for the political establishment, not just the CDU.
HANGZHOU, China German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that G20 countries are working on rules to improve conditions for investment in Africa and added she believed it was urgent for more direct foreign investment to flow to the continent. It was the first of five regional votes before a national election expected next September. According to Reuters, Merkel’s CDU reported 19% of the vote, marking their worst result in the party’s history.
Germany accepted over 1 million refugees in 2015.
Merkel admitted Monday that decisions on immigration played a role in the result, but insisted that she has made the right ones.
Last week, she said that a fourth candidacy would be tied to whether she decides to seek re-election as party chairwoman in a ballot set for a party convention in December.
“Right now, the chancellor is not hitting the right tone in nearly all the areas that most concern her voters: refugees, Europe, public safety”, wrote Gabor Steingart, the publisher of the main business daily Handelsblatt, which has been among her strongest critics.
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“It takes time for lost trust to be regained”, the CDU’s secretary general, Peter Tauber, said on Sunday.
