German Chancellor Angela Merkel took partial responsibility for her party’s worst-ever performance in a Berlin state election, acknowledging Monday that her government’s policies at the national level were a factor.
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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.
And she struck an optimistic note about the ability of Europe’s top economic power to eventually integrate tens of thousands of refugees who will remain in Germany, including many from war-ravaged Syria.
“If I could, I would turn back the time by many, many years”, Merkel said, sounding particularly somber.
“And, the most important one, could Angela Merkel simply decide not to run for a fourth term in office, as she could have had enough of the bickering in her own party?”, Brzeski noted.
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.
Before the vote, Berlin’s SPD Mayor Michael Mueller warned that a strong AfD result would be “seen throughout the world as a sign of the resurgence of the right and of Nazis in Germany”.
The party narrowly missed clearing the 5-percent threshold to enter the national Parliament in 2013.
“When we can reach double digits even on hard turf like Berlin, then we are an established party”, Jörg Meuthen, AfD co-leader said.
The nationalist anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, easily entered its 10th state parliament with 14.2 percent of the vote.
The CDU won 17.6 percent in Berlin, down from 23.3 percent in the last election in Berlin in 2011.
And the ecologist Greens landed in third place with 15 per cent, meaning they will likely form a ruling coalition with the SPD and Linke.
The liberal FDP party, on 7 percent overall, also came back from the dead, after having been nearly wiped out in previous votes.
The Berlin result marks the second recent defeat for Merkel since Germany adopted its much vaunted but highly controversial refugee policy. The campaign, however, did indicate uncertainty about the future of the political party that has dominated Germany for the past decade.
The party is expected to be ousted from the state governing coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats.
Merkel said she wouldn’t accept a “static” cap on the number of migrants coming to Germany, leaving open the possibility that some sort of flexible maximum could be introduced – a position she has previously rejected.
Speaking Monday alongside her Christian Democratic Party’s Berlin mayoral candidate Frank Henkel, Merkel called the election result “bitter”.
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One of Merkel’s current allies, Bavaria governor Horst Seehofer, told German newspaper Der Spiegel that a rift in policy between them could worsen if the Chancellor fails to impose a ceiling on immigration.
