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.
Advertisement
The AfD managed to win 20.8 percent of the vote in its first election in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, adopting an anti-immigration and anti-Islam platform amid widespread fears in Germany about the refugee crisis.
Her decision has left her increasingly isolated in Europe, and exposed her to heavy criticism at home, including from her own conservative allies.
According to CSU General Secretary Andreas Scheuer, Seehofer intends to present a comprehensive list of demands for refugee policy at a meeting of top party leaders of the CDU-CSU union and SPD on Sunday.
Merkel, however, remains convinced that this policy was “right from the start”.
“I have no reason to look optimistically on the government’s actions regarding the issue of refugees”.
A pensioner and former teacher who declined to be named said he picked AfD because of the “question over asylum-seekers”.
Bavarian finance minister Markus Soeder said the results should serve as a “wake-up call” for Merkel on her refugee policy.
Mecklenburg-West Pomerania has taken in fewer asylum seekers than most German states – only 25,000 of the 1.1?million who arrived in 2015 – but voters expressed their anger at the policy during the election campaign. They have ruled the state in a coalition with Merkel’s CDU for the past decade.
In a hasty meeting with German reporters broadcast live from China, Merkel said that national themes – in particular migration and integration – had been dominant in the vote, and that “many people do not have sufficient confidence in our ability to solve this”. The shift in people voting for the reigning Christian Democrats to the right-wing groups such as AfD and Front National is proving disastrous for Mrs. Merkel.
“A rejection of the humanitarian stance we took could have led to even worse consequences”, the German chancellor said, adding that the assailants “wanted to undermine our sense of community, our openness and our willingness to help people in need”.
Days ahead of Sunday’s vote, Merkel urged the population to reject AfD.
Theres no realistic prospect at present of AfD going into government.
Advertisement
However, this Monday she was more than 10 hours away at the G20 summit in China and although she held a press conference on the summit in China, Germans were not impressed it was almost 20 hours after the polls closed.
