Angela Merkel's refugee dilemma

Increasing numbers of people had been flowing to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa before 2015, but numbers surged during the northern summer last year.

By September, the EU's Dublin Regulation, which means that refugees must register and have their claim heard in the country where they first entered the EU, appeared to be in tatters, as countries like Hungary and Greece on the EU's periphery became overwhelmed, even though most of the migrants were heading on to the economic bright lights of Germany.

In Germany, about 76,000 people arrived in July. In August, the number more than doubled to 170,000. As authorities across the EU struggled to work out what to do, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced that all Syrian refugees would be allowed to stay in Germany while their claims for asylum were processed.

Stefan Kornelius, the foreign editor of Germany's popular newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, says her decision was guided by two factors.

'First, we were faced in Europe with a tsunami of people coming from the Balkans and from northern Africa via the Mediterranean, which we could simply not deter. The German borders are not guardable. You couldn't close down the borders—thousands and thousands of kilometres—and post guards all over the place. So it was technically unfeasible to deter those people,' he says.

'Then there is definitely a historical factor. Germany went through extremely difficult phases in its history. It caused a lot of dismay and trouble in Europe itself and caused a lot of refugees itself. Also, a lot of Germans did experience being a refugee, being driven out of their homelands or their home territories after World War II.

'The country is extremely sensitive on how to deal with people being in a desperate situation. In that context the German government, led by Angela Merkel, decided to be extremely open and probably even welcoming.'

Josef Janning from the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin says Merkel also saw the announcement as a way to assert some authority over the situation and to send a message to her partners in the EU.

'She decided at a rather late point in time that one had to become proactive on this issue in order to have any chance to shape it,' he says.

'In this she may have underestimated the dynamics of the response to her position because she had in mind to actually take off pressure of those member states of the European Union that already had a large number of new arrivals by taking more in Germany.'

Janning says it appears Merkel made two major underestimations: 'One was the degree to which the displaced communities are connected nowadays. We are not talking about the classic refugees anymore who just barely managed to escape with nothing on them but what they wear. Now you have refugee families and clans with smartphones and credit cards, much better connected, much better organised, and you have a highly mobile and fast business environment of human trafficking.

'The second thing that Angela Merkel has probably underestimated or misjudged was the degree to which [EU] members would bypass the moral and realpolitik authority that Germany would gain in a unilateral gesture of that sort. She had thought that by disproportionately taking a large number of people compared to many other EU member states, it would put these states under much more pressure to engage on a joint policy response.'

Kornelius says that unlike the situation with Greece and the euro crisis, the German chancellor had no leverage with her EU partners.

'You have to acknowledge that she was acting under supreme time pressure and that when those numbers of refugees came in August there wasn't that much time to negotiate a major refugee scheme for the European Union,' he says.

'She probably was naive in showing her openness. If she would have been a little bit more deterring, she could have rallied more European heads of states behind her and come up with a joint scheme for refugees. But since she took all the brunt on Germany, those other countries now say, "Well, you Germans invited them, you better deal with them."

'Germany was used [to the fact] that within the European Union it did have quite some leverage. In the economic crisis and the currency crisis with Greece, Germany did have the leverage because of the economic weight and because Germany is paying most of the bill.

'In the refugee situation there was no leverage, there was nothing we could push others with. On the contrary, Germany was dependent on other countries to cooperate and to come up with joint policies without being able to give anything.'

Opposition swells following attacks on women

Merkel's strategy seems to have backfired on all counts. After 10 years in office with poll numbers other politicians can only dream of, her position is now under threat, especially since the New Year's Eve attacks on women—apparently by young men of North African or Middle Eastern origin—in large German cities like Cologne.

'We later found out that the same kind of thing happened in other cities in Germany, in Dusseldorf, in Hamburg, in Stuttgart, although not on such a large scale,' Kornelius says.

'These people were definitely not integrated; they were extremely new in the country. Some of them weren't even registered. So we saw and we had proof of a breakdown of the internal order in Germany.

'This is extremely worrying to most Germans because pretty much they've proved those fears that we were not under control of the situation anymore. The government had to admit to those mistakes and to these major problems, and this is why we now see some major attempts to change course to reduce the numbers and to bring back the notion of safety and control on the government's side.'

There have been demonstrations since then against Germany's refugee policy by extreme right-wing political groups, as well as counter-demonstrations by those who support Germany's approach.

'Right-wing populism and even extremism is nothing new to Germany, as to most other European countries,' notes Kornelius.

'In most European countries you have right-wing populist parties, 15 per cent to 20 per cent in the polls. In Germany it's much lower, but the euro crisis and now the refugee crisis have fuelled their support. We will see a continued influx into these groups. We will see more demonstrations. We will see more support for those groups.

'In March we have regional elections, and all polls predict that the right-wing populists will be elected at quite significant numbers, let's say 10 per cent to 12 per cent. I guess Germany has to deal with this overall political phenomenon—that we have to accept right-wing populism, even though historical experiences should teach Germans that they don't fare well with that.'

Schengen scheme risks crumbling within weeks

Germany, Sweden and Austria, which have between them taken in 90 per cent of last year's asylum seekers, have announced plans to tighten border controls, and in Austria's case, to cap the numbers of asylum seekers it will take over the next four years. The increasing reintroduction of national border controls could mean that one of the cornerstones of the European Union—the Schengen scheme that allows the free movement of people and goods—could crumble within weeks, threatening the future of the union itself.

'Domestically, the pressure is on Angela Merkel is to bring down the numbers,' Janning says. 'She knows that politically she cannot survive if 2016 is like 2015. So there have to be considerably fewer people than the 1.1 million that Germany admitted in 2015. And she has to deliver on this. There is no way out.

'On the European level, her challenge is to somehow bring about a cooperative response to that, because she doesn't have the option that Sweden has and she doesn't have the option that the Austrians took the other day to introduce a ceiling, because if Germany did that, the whole system would explode.

'Germany is right in the middle of the EU, has nine neighbours, all part of the Schengen system, including Switzerland, which is not even a member of the EU but participates in Schengen. If Germany did this, open borders inside the EU would be gone from that day on.

'So Angela Merkel is condemned to seek a European solution, even if that solution is vastly asymmetrical—that is, involving only a few member states and disproportionately being paid for by Germany. But she has no choice. It's either a total breakdown or she will not deliver on the domestic expectation, and either thing will kill her government. So somehow she has to find a way.'

Rear Vision puts contemporary events in their historical context, answering the question, ‘How did it come to this?’