In prepared remarks, Merkel said she would do things differently if she could go back again and prepare better to cope with the influx of around one million migrants who flooded into Germany a year ago.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel considers backing down on her open-door refugee policy after taking the blame for her party’s declining popularity.
“I take responsibility as party leader and chancellor”, Merkel said at a news conference alongside her party’s mayoral candidate, Frank Henkel. “Because of its history, post-war Germany has lacked a viable right-wing political party”.
Merkel, whose government has allowed more than one million people seeking asylum into the country, faces voters in national elections next September.
Adding to her woes: on Monday morning, for the first time, her own Social Democrat (SPD) coalition allies flagged a three-way centre-left coalition with Germany’s Greens and Linke (Left) Party as a viable option to oust Dr Merkel from power in next year’s federal elections. The question is whether Angela Merkel will indeed view the result as a “wake up call” or carry on regardless?
The party which has gained from Mrs Markel’s problems is the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) grouping, a far right party which won 13 per cent of vote and will enter capital’s parliament and which the Mayor had warned a double digit score would be seen as return of “Nazis”.
She told reporters that she meant her mantra “Germany will manage” the migrant situation as encouragement, but that some people took it as a provocation.
But she said: “The almost 15% win for the right wing AfD even in this very liberal city shows that, like many other parts of the country, it has surged to become a real political force that Merkel can not ignore”.
Nationally, Merkel’s CDU is in a so-called grand coalition with its Bavaria-only sister-party CSU and the Social Democrats.
She went on to say that the refugee influx in 2015 was “out of control” at certain moments. SPD’s celebrations would be muted, however, as it’s down nearly 7 percentage points from the last election. Berlin is now expected to get its first left-wing triple coalition of SPD, the Greens and either the the Left party – who came third on 15.7%- or the liberal Free Democrats (6.7%).
Merkel said she would “turn back time for many, many years” if possible, to better prepare for the “humanitarian emergency” that took place last summer.
The CDU won 17.6% of the vote – its worst-ever result in Berlin.
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The Berlin vote continued a trend of a fracturing of the electorate and surging support for fringe parties, with both the far left and the right wing the winners of the day.
