Merkel Role in Heir’s Exit Puts Her at Center of German Turmoil

After Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plane touched down in Berlin on Saturday from a long-haul flight, the veteran leader of many a crisis wasted little time taking control of an emergency at home.


Patrick Donahue and Arne Delfs   13 Feb 2020

© Reuters German Chancellor Angela Merkel - will her legacy be soured?

She helped avert the meltdown of the euro, navigated an influx of refugees and handled the tricky personality of Donald Trump. How she deals with the German political vortex left by the sudden resignation of her heir apparent may be the final test of her crisis-management skills.

The legacy of the “Teflon chancellor” is at stake, and the root of the problem runs deep.

Before returning to Germany, Merkel determined she needed to take charge of efforts by her Christian Democratic Union to deal with a firestorm over a state chapter’s dalliance with the far right. She signaled to associates that she was aware of the damage done to her hand-picked successor’s authority by events in Thuringia, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Related: The Merkel model of power

© AP Angela Merkel is widely respected across Europe.

Shortly after landing at around 6 a.m. at the military terminal at Berlin’s Tegel airport, Merkel shifted into action. She axed her top liaison for the eastern German states, who had applauded the contentious election in Thuringia that sparked the turmoil.

Then in the sprawling glass-and-cement compound of the chancellery, she averted the threat to break up her government by the Social Democrats, her junior partner.

After an emergency meeting of the coalition parties starting at 1 p.m., they issued a statement demanding that Thuringia’s rogue state leader step down. Echoing words Merkel uttered during her trip to Africa, they said the appointment of the Free Democrats’ Thomas Kemmerich was enabled by the “unforgivable” cooperation with the right-wing Alternative for Germany.

Almost simultaneously, he tweeted his resignation.

In the span of a few hours, Merkel put on display the qualities that have kept her in charge of Europe’s largest economy for more than 14 years. But in the process, she undercut Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, her former protege.

The CDU leader -- known by her initials AKK -- was reduced to calling the party’s top officials to gauge their support, according to a person close to the events. After a cool reception, she announced her resignation as chairwoman less than 48 hours after Merkel’s damage control.

“It makes logical sense to speculate whether the next CDU hopeful has to insist on a quick Merkel retreat,” said Carsten Nickel, managing director of consultancy Teneo. “AKK’s fate will be a warning sign for whoever succeeds her.”

When the CDU chief informed the party’s inner circle of her sudden resignation -- after little more than a year in charge of the party that has governed Germany for much of its post-war history -- the reaction was a wall of silence that lasted for nearly a minute, according to people familiar with the meeting.

© Reuters Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer indirectly blamed
Angela Merkel for her downfall.

In a press conference later on Monday, AKK indirectly blamed Merkel for her fall, saying the experiment of separating the chancellorship from party leadership, which Merkel proposed, had proved to be a failure.

“The open question around the chancellery candidacy weakens the CDU in a political moment in Germany that requires a strong CDU,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Monday.

The messy exit now risks snapping back on Merkel. Without AKK serving as the buffer for domestic feuding, ire over the CDU’s fading support amid Germany’s increasingly fractious political landscape will be directed at Merkel.

A growing chorus of conservative lawmakers are demanding a speedier search for a CDU leader, who would almost certainly be the party’s next chancellor candidate. While it would be difficult to push Merkel out, the pressure will intensify as the party moves ahead with personnel decisions.

Two contenders, including Merkel’s arch-nemesis Friedrich Merz, have already signaled interest in her job.

In the Spotlight

The situation limits Merkel’s room to maneuver and risks souring her legacy as she seeks to hang on until her terms ends in 2021. That could be a blow to European peers who rely on her leadership.

Gallery: Merkel's friends and foes in the EU (DW)

“For Europe, Angela Merkel is very important,” Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said in an interview in Lisbon. “Her experience and her open mind are very important for Europe in this moment when we are discussing a lot about the future of Europe.”

The search for a successor, which Merkel plans to involve herself in, will mark a do-over of the contest that Kramp-Karrenbauer won in December 2018.

At the time, Merkel pushed the former premier of Saarland to defend her centrist approach from right-wing factions in the party. But after a series of gaffes and poor election results as the party lost support to the anti-immigrant AfD and environmentalist Greens, AKK had been on the ropes for months.

Her lack of authority was on full display during an emergency trip to Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia. She wanted state legislators to agree to new elections as way to clear the slate for defying her orders by allying with the AfD.

Emotions were running raw as the meeting stretched into the wee hours of Friday. Despite her efforts, the state lawmakers rebuffed her over fears of putting their jobs on the line for party principle, according to people familiar with the events.

During a late-night press statement, her strain was on full display, with her voice cracking just before rushing off for the long drive back to Berlin, returning empty handed and with the clock ticking on her brief stint at the pinnacle of German politics.

As has been the case since 2005, the spotlight will now be focused squarely back on Merkel.

--With assistance from Joao Lima.

To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net;Arne Delfs in Berlin at adelfs@bloomberg.net

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/merkel-role-in-heirs-exit-puts-her-at-center-of-german-turmoil/ar-BBZXjiG

https://news.yahoo.com/merkel-role-heir-exit-puts-050000971.html

Merkel rules out far-right alliance after 'unforgivable' vote

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Thursday against ceding ground to the far right, a day after the "unforgivable" election of a state premier with help from the AfD party shattered a taboo and invited parallels with the 1930s.

07 Feb 2020    AFP

Merkel reiterated that her centre-right CDU would never work with the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant AfD and joined calls for new elections in the small state of Thuringia.

© JENS SCHLUETER Thomas Kemmerich from the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) stunned Germany by winning a run-off vote for the Thuringia premiership, after far-right AfD lawmakers backed him

What happened in Thuringia "is unforgivable and that's why the result must be reversed", Merkel said at a press conference in South Africa.

Jon Stone

✔@joncstone

how the Left party's leader in Thuringia congratulated the liberal who got elected state president with the support for the far-right https://twitter.com/UlrichSchneider/status/1225142079317315584 …

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Thomas Kemmerich from the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) stunned Germany on Wednesday when he became the surprise winner of a run-off vote for the Thuringia premiership, after AfD lawmakers ditched their own candidate to back him.

© Valentina BRESCHI Composition of the state parliament of Thuringia in Germany, in seats by party.

It was the first time in German post-war history that a state premier was helped into office by accepting votes from the far right, crossing a red line in a country haunted by its Nazi past.

Thousands took to the streets in protest in cities across Germany late Wednesday, including in Berlin, Frankfurt and Thuringia's capital Erfurt.

Some carried signs that read "Never again" and "Voters betrayed", while others recalled that it was in Thuringia in 1930 that a Nazi minister was first allowed into government.

© Phill Magakoe Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, called for the election result to be 'reversed'The aftershocks of the crisis were being felt in Berlin too, since Thuringian state lawmakers from Merkel's own CDU lined up with the FDP and far right in voting for Kemmerich over popular incumbent Bodo Ramelow from the far-left Die Linke.

Merkel's centre-left Social Democratic (SPD) coalition partners reacted furiously to the debacle, calling for her conservative party to clearly distance itself from the AfD if the national government is to survive.

"There can be no carrying on as usual without resolving this problem," fumed SPD co-leader Norbert Walter-Borjans.

The SPD and CDU are due to hold crisis talks in Berlin on Saturday.

Related: Things to know about Merkel (Photos)

1/14 SLIDES © Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The Chancellor of Germany since 2005, Angela Merkel is arguably one of the most powerful and influential figure in politics today. Following her announcement that she will not seek re-election to the post in 2021, and will retire from public life, we look at some interesting facts about her life and career.

Speaking in Pretoria, Merkel said the CDU's Thuringia branch would not be allowed to help Kemmerich cobble together a minority government.

She called Wednesday's vote "a bad day for democracy" and said the role played by her local allies "broke with the values and convictions of the CDU".

"We must now do everything we can to make clear that this can in no way be reconciled with what the CDU does and thinks, and that's what we will work on in the coming days," she added.

- 'Shame' -

In states across Germany's former communist east, the AfD is a major political force and mainstream parties are increasingly scrambling to keep it locked out of the corridors of power.

In Thuringia, the AfD is led by Bjoern Hoecke, one of the party's most radical figures who has called for a "180 degree turn" in Germany's atonement for Nazi crimes.

A picture of Hoecke shaking hands with Kemmerich after the election win was splashed across the front pages of several German newspapers.

"The handshake of shame", screamed best-selling daily Bild, slamming Kemmerich for "letting himself be elected by a neo-Nazi".

On social media, the picture was quickly twinned with one of Adolf Hitler shaking hands with German president Paul von Hindenburg in 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor.

Ramelow, Thuringia's ousted premier, highlighted the part played by the state in normalising Hitler's NSDAP (Nazi) party.

He tweeted a 1930 quote from Hitler celebrating the NSDAP's kingmaker role in the state: "Our biggest success is in Thuringia," the Nazi leader said at the time.

Since its creation in 2003, the AfD has gone from strength to strength in Germany, capitalising on anger over Merkel's 2015 decision to allow in over a million asylum seekers.

At the last general election, the party scored almost 13 percent nationwide and won its first seats in the German parliament.

The SPD's Walter-Borjans warned that the world was watching how Germany was dealing with the rise of the far right and the "breach in the dam" in Thuringia.

"What has happened here is a signal that we can't allow to go unanswered," he said.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/merkel-rules-out-far-right-alliance-after-unforgivable-vote/ar-BBZIjFd

Germany’s far-right AfD becomes kingmaker in regional election, prompting shockwaves in Berlin

The AfD is known to be a nationalist, euroskeptic party that rose to prominence in 2013 amid a wave of populist parties in Europe and opposition to euro zone bailouts.

PUBLISHED THU, FEB 6 2020 3:48 AM EST

Holly Ellyatt@HOLLYELLYATT

KEY POINTS

• The AfD is known to be a nationalist, euroskeptic party that rose to prominence in 2013 amid a wave of populist parties in Europe and opposition to euro zone bailouts.
• Political analysts say the reverberations of the Thuringia election will be felt in Merkel’s fragile governing coalition of the CDU and Social Democrats (SPD).



Demonstrators protest in front of the federal office of the FDP against the behavior of the FDP in the election of the parliamentary group and state chairman of the FDP in Thuringia as Minister President of the state of Thuringia.

picture alliance

• The small German state of Thuringia has caused a political uproar in Berlin after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party helped to elect the state’s new premier.

Thomas Kemmerich from the liberal, pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), is the first mainstream German politician to have been elected with the help of the controversial, anti-immigration AfD party.

The election of Kemmerich was itself a surprise as Bodo Ramelow, of the leftwing Die Linke party, had won Thuringia’s state election in October and was expected to form a minority government in the region on Wednesday.

However, the AfD party joined forces with the Christian Democratic Union (the CDU, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel) to back and elect Kemmerich. The election breaks a taboo among the country’s mainstream parties, including the CDU and FDP, to ostracize the AfD.

Describing it as a “political earthquake,” ING Germany’s Chief Economist Carsten Brzeski said “the shockwaves of today’s events have already reached Berlin and are unlikely to ebb away quickly ... In our view, today’s events do not represent a shift to the right but illustrate that German politics have become more fluid.”

The AfD is known to be a nationalist, euroskeptic party that rose to prominence in 2013 amid a wave of populist parties in Europe and opposition to euro zone bailouts.

In latter years, however, the party has shifted its campaign focus to an anti-immigration, anti-Islam stance and has grown in popularity, its position chiming with some German voters disenchanted with Merkel’s decision to accept over a million migrants around 2015. Its rising popularity with voters has horrified many in Germany who fear a return to fascism. Center-right parties like the CDU have also lost voters to the AfD.

Shockwaves

Political analysts say the reverberations of the Thuringia election will be felt in Merkel’s fragile governing coalition of the CDU and Social Democrats (SPD).

“Today’s controversial election of a new minister president in the East German state of Thuringia will refuel tensions within the coalition and in Merkel’s party,” Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo Intelligence, said in a note Wednesday.

“The move by the Thuringian CDU is a balancing act, but it will be perceived as a provocation in Berlin,” he said.

“In essence, the Thuringian CDU today chose silent cooperation with the AfD over the acceptance of a post-communist, if moderate incumbent. Already, leftist politicians have reacted by drawing parallels to the enabling role the German center-right played during the rise of the fascist dictatorship in the early 1930s,” Nickel added.

Thuringia, with just over 2 million inhabitants, was one of the first federal states where Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party (or Nazi party) gained power after an election in 1929.

‘A bad day for Germany’

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Thuringia’s main cities Wednesday evening to protest the election of Kemmerich, with the help of the AfD, and the hashtag #Dammbruch (“Dam burst”) was trending on Twitter, reflecting shock among the public that mainstream parties had broken the pact.

Thuringia’s new state premier Kemmerich himself told the regional parliament that he was against fascism amid outcry from his own party. He also ruled out forming any governing alliance with the AfD.

Thuringian CDU leader Mike Mohring tried to distance himself from the AfD too, saying his part was not responsible for the voting behavior of other parties, like the AfD. Meanwhile, the co-chairman of leftist Die Linke party, Bernd Riexinger, described the election of Kemmerich as a “taboo breach.”

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leader of the national CDU party, called for new elections and said what had happened was “a bad day for Thuringia, a bad day for Germany.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/shockwaves-in-berlin-as-far-right-afd-lends-support-to-mainstream.html

Merkel says German multiculturalism has failed (9 years ago!)

Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society has “utterly failed,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam polarising her conservative camp.

OCTOBER 17, 2010 / 4:20 AM / 9 YEARS AGO

German Chancellor and head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party Angela Merkel speaks at the congress of the youth wing of the CDU, Junge Union, in Potsdam, October 16, 2010. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.

“This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin.

Merkel faces pressure from within her CDU to take a tougher line on immigrants who don’t show a willingness to adapt to German society and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.

She said too little had been required of immigrants in the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have opportunities on the labour market.

The debate over foreigners in Germany has shifted since former central banker Thilo Sarrazin published a book accusing Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society.

Sarrazin was censured for his views and dismissed from the Bundesbank, but his book proved highly popular and polls showed a majority of Germans agreed with the thrust of his arguments.

Merkel has tried to accommodate both sides of the debate, talking tough on integration but also telling Germans that they must accept that mosques have become part of their landscape.

She said on Saturday that the education of unemployed Germans should take priority over recruiting workers from abroad, while noting Germany could not get by without skilled foreign workers.

In a weekend newspaper interview, her Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) raised the possibility of lowering barriers to entry for some foreign workers in order to fight the lack of skilled workers in Europe’s largest economy.

“For a few years, more people have been leaving our country than entering it,” she told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. “Wherever it is possible, we must lower the entry hurdles for those who bring the country forward.”

The German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) says Germany lacks about 400,000 skilled workers.

Yet Horst Seehofer, chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s sister party, has rejected any relaxation of immigration laws and said last week there was no room in Germany for more people from “alien cultures.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-merkel-immigration-idUKTRE69F19T20101016

DEBATE: Is the collapse of German coalition talks the end for Angela Merkel?

Angela Merkel is weaker than ever (Source: Getty)

Tuesday 21 November 2017 4:15am
Denis MacShane and Beatrice Faleri

Is the collapse of German coalition talks the end for Angela Merkel?

Denis MacShane, former minister of Europe and now a senior advisor at Avisa Partners, says YES.

Two years ago, I wrote an op-ed arguing that Angela Merkel was taking a huge risk in going on and on and seeking a fourth term like the previous CDU Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, whose last years in office were a disaster.

Feted globally, especially by those who take part in Davos and other similar gatherings of world elites, Merkel has lost touch with her fellow Germans.

Dieselgate, the abrupt turn from nuclear and coal to unproven wind power, and above all the decision to open German borders to a million or more Arab Muslims fleeing the destroyed states in the Middle East, have shown an idiosyncratic, personalised form of rule.

Germany needs a renewal of its infrastructure. It needs policy for the left-behinds in the old industrial east. And most importantly it needs a twenty-first century generation of leaders of the main parties to tackle the threat of the extreme right, which now has nearly 100 seats in the Bundestag.

Read more: German president urges parties to consider forming a new government

Beatrice Faleri, an economist and freelance writer, says NO.

After the failure of coalition talks in Germany, Angela Merkel is weaker than ever, but the end of her leadership will not come soon.

The Christian Democrats’ internal politics and traditional loyalty make her position watertight. After the talks, she was endorsed by most of her party’s prominent figures – including one of her few potential successors, Jens Spahn.

Merkel built her leadership on the downfall of her predecessor, Helmut Kohl, and has carefully navigated party politics so as not to let her position be undermined. It helps that, since the election, debates on the party’s future and the responsibility for the loss of vote share have been silenced relatively successfully.

But even if her grip on the party was not so stable, there would be little to gain in substituting her. There is no guarantee that, in fresh elections, a new leader would recapture votes on the right, while maintaining those gained by Merkel on the centre-left. Her approval ratings are still highest among the moderates than any other prominent Christian Democrat.

If Merkel goes, it’s hard to see anyone who could replace her.

Read more: Germany stuck in limbo after coalition talks collapse

http://www.cityam.com/276110/debate-collapse-german-coalition-talks-end-angela-merkel