Angela Merkel’s stance on refugees means she stands alone against catastrophe
Alberto Nardelli
The
German chancellor’s open-door policy remains, despite compromises.
Her challenge is to convince her European counterparts to follow her
lead
Sun
8 Nov 2015 18.46 GMT Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 07.48 GMT
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‘One voice has not faltered during Europe’s refugee crisis: Angela Merkel’s.’ Photograph: Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters
Less
than 10 weeks ago, Europe’s front pages were dominated by the photo
of a dead Syrian child
who drowned as his family attempted to reach the shores of Greece.
Once the tears dried, many of those same newspapers went back to
their usual ways. The noble words of politicians were not followed by
action. “Europe has a duty to help refugees – but not in our
country” is still
the prevalent view
among most Europeans.
Germany receives nearly half of all Syrian asylum applicants
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more
But
one voice has not faltered during Europe’s refugee crisis: Angela
Merkel’s. “We will cope,” she insists. As criticism grew
louder, her popularity dipped to its lowest levels since 2011. For
the first time in a long time, her position as chancellor no longer
seemed impregnable. But the beat didn’t change: Wir
schaffen das
– “We will cope.” To the critics at home, as the number of
asylum seekers swelled over the summer, she said Germany
would continue to welcome refugees.
Otherwise, she argued, it would “not be my country”.
But
the chancellor’s resolve didn’t assuage the unease of her own
party. Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union, the
Christian Democratic Union’s Bavarian sister party, said
that it was a mistake
to welcome so many asylum seekers. He even threatened to take legal
action. Some commentators ventured so far as to say that the end of
the Merkel era was in sight.
They
were wrong, again. After weeks of speculation and arguments,
Germany’s coalition partners reached an agreement on a refugee
policy last week. Like many previous deals struck by Merkel during
her 10 years as chancellor, it was a compromise. She dropped plans
for transit zones,
a win for the Social Democrats. To placate the right wing of her
party, she committed to speeding up procedures for deporting economic
migrants, while some refugees will have to wait two years before
their family members can enter the country. But these are details. On
her most important principle, Merkel stood firm: there will be no
upper limit to the number of refugees that Germany can take. Her
“refugees are welcome” policy is intact.
The
choice is ultimately between doing what is necessary to save lives or
turning the other way
Much
has been made of Merkel’s near obsession with detail and political
calculation. A verb – “merkeln”
– was even coined to describe her perceived indecisiveness.
However, behind a decade of compromises there is one common thread
that often goes unnoticed: in the end, Merkel gets what she wants and
is less compromising on what matters most. This summer, during
negotiations between Greece and its European creditors, Merkel was
portrayed as the pantomime villain of that particular story. But as
two European government officials put it to me after a deal was
finally struck: “At the end of the day, if Merkel had agreed with
Wolfgang
Schäuble,
her finance minister, Greece would have left the euro and there
wouldn’t have been a deal.”
In
July, the bigger
picture was saving the euro.
Today, the bigger picture is about how Europe deals with a
humanitarian
crisis
in which hundreds of thousands of people have fled conflict and
misery in search of refuge. We can have an endless debate about what
should be done, or what could have been done, in Syria
itself. Likewise, focusing aid and help on neighbouring camps in
Lebanon, Jordan and Lebanon where there are more than four million
Syrian refugees, is a valid and just argument, and should be part of
any plan.
However,
we cannot turn back time nor can we fast-forward years into the
future – and one inescapable fact remains: there are hundreds of
thousands of refugees in Europe.
They are here now and they will keep coming. The hundreds of
thousands are fleeing war, they leave home to embark on perilous,
often fatal, journeys because their home is no more. And no fence,
wishful thinking or amount of aid money alone will change this.
Cemetery of souls: the refugee crisis on Lesbos – in pictures
The
choice is ultimately between doing what is necessary to save lives,
or turning away. On this particular decision, Merkel stands
tall above her European counterparts.
Sadly, she stands almost alone.
Let’s
imagine for a moment that Merkel loses this argument and is
prematurely ousted from power. Germany has received almost half
of all asylum-seeking Syrians
in Europe this year: 243,721 since January – more than 12 times the
number that Britain will take over the next five years. What would
happen if Germany suddenly adopted Britain’s approach – or
Hungary’s, and started to erect
fences to keep refugees out?
Or took the position of governments in eastern Europe that want to
welcome only Christian refugees? Hundreds of thousands of people
would be left stranded in no-man’s land across Europe short of aid,
food and shelter. A crisis would rapidly become a catastrophe.
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The
fork in the road in front of Europe’s leaders is about the purpose
of their power. In 1957 John F Kennedy, then a senator from
Massachusetts, published the pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles
in Courage.
In it he describes those rare instances when politicians should go
against what’s popular and the opinion of their party, and take
instead brave action. The politicians profiled in the book all have
one thing in common: they put their careers on the line to do what
they felt was right.
Refugee crisis: EU states failing to meet funding and resource commitments
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more
Politics
fixates on the daily twists and turns of polling and approvals, of
Twitter trends and digital soundbites. Short-term tactics dominate –
and there is rarely the time or space for longer-term vision and
boldness. But if we take a longer view and think back through
history, at what fills its pages, and at how today’s events will be
recounted decades from now, it is not the highs and lows of polling
that will be remembered. True leadership is about taking risks when
the issue at stake is so great.
The
current refugee crisis has been labelled as the largest since the end
of the second world war. We have been told it’s the greatest
challenge Europe has faced since the cold war. But the response of
Europe’s leaders hasn’t matched that impressive billing. Some
have argued that it was Merkel’s welcoming approach to refugees
that opened the floodgates. That this is a tragedy of her own making.
Such an argument is not only wrong, its proponents fail to explain
what the alternative is.
Merkel
is right – both morally and legally – on refugees: there should
be no upper limit to the human right of asylum. On the contrary, her
challenge, if anything, is that pretty much every other European
leader is wrong. That is the real tragedy.
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