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Merkel Accepts Responsibility for Party’s Losses in Berlin Election Angela Merkel Accepts Responsibility for Party’s Losses in Berlin Election
(about 9 hours later)
BERLIN — A reflective, slightly emotional Angela Merkel acknowledged on Monday that her decision to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country last year had alienated many voters, leading to “very bitter” losses for her party in recent state elections. But she urged Germans to follow her conviction that the country will benefit from the refugees in the long run. BERLIN — Throughout the almost 11 years Chancellor Angela Merkel has been in office in Germany, her nation has been reassuringly stable in the midst of tumult throughout Europe, maintaining a steady economy and stolidly predictable politics.
In a speech that was at times personal, Ms. Merkel, the German chancellor, took responsibility for the record-low showing in balloting in Berlin over the weekend for her center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union. She also acknowledged a role in the party’s humiliating third-place finish two weeks ago, behind the Social Democratic Party and a nationalist party, Alternative for Germany, in her home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. She pledged to work to regain voters’ trust. But it is becoming increasingly clear that Ms. Merkel’s decision last year to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the country has set off aftershocks that continue to upend politics in Germany and beyond. And on Monday, a day after voters in Berlin dealt her party another stinging loss in the second regional vote in two weeks, she was left to convince voters that she was not out of touch with their anger and anxiety over the flood of immigrants.
“If I could, I would turn back time by many, many years to better prepare myself and the whole German government for the situation that reached us unprepared in late summer 2015,” Ms. Merkel said after meeting with party leaders. “Nobody, including myself, wants a repeat of this situation.” “If I could, I would turn back time by many, many years to better prepare myself and the whole German government for the situation that reached us unprepared in late summer 2015,” Ms. Merkel said after meeting with leaders of her party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union. “Nobody, including myself, wants a repeat of this situation.”
Germany is traditionally a conservative country, but political change has been swift since Ms. Merkel allowed more than a million refugees to enter last year. The arrival of the migrants was only slowed this spring when the European Union struck an agreement with Turkey and Balkan states began closing their borders. In a speech that was at times personal, Ms. Merkel took responsibility for her party’s record-low showing in balloting in Berlin. She also acknowledged a role in the party’s humiliating third-place finish, behind the Social Democratic Party and a nationalist party, Alternative for Germany, two weeks ago in her home state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. She pledged to work to regain voters’ trust.
Since her decision to welcome refugees from Syria and other poor and war-torn countries, the effects across Germany and Europe have only grown more intense. The main political beneficiary of the backlash in Germany has been Alternative for Germany — a trend that has played out across much of the Continent, where far-right, anti-immigrant parties are on the rise in many countries.
The question of how far to go in assimilating the migrants has exposed a deep rift between Eastern and Western Europe, and the economic and cultural challenges of absorbing so many people have contributed to rising nationalism in countries including France, the Netherlands and Austria, and to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
On Monday, instead of gathering with President Obama and other world leaders in New York at the United Nations, Ms. Merkel stayed home to shore up her political standing a year ahead of general elections, deflecting questions about whether she would even run again.
The chancellor defended her decision as “absolutely right,” but she acknowledged that “ultimately, it led to a time when we did not have enough control over the situation.” She pointed to legislation and efforts since then aimed at helping to regain control and integrate the new arrivals.The chancellor defended her decision as “absolutely right,” but she acknowledged that “ultimately, it led to a time when we did not have enough control over the situation.” She pointed to legislation and efforts since then aimed at helping to regain control and integrate the new arrivals.
Voters’ shift away from the mainstream — Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their center-left partner in national government, the Social Democrats — has roiled politics across Germany, making Ms. Merkel’s re-election next year look increasingly uncertain. Her conservative party’s loss on Sunday in the state elections in Berlin, she acknowledged, was the result of the mass arrival of refugees and a resulting protest vote against the party.
There was a time when a loss at the state level on the scale of Berlin’s vote on Sunday would have been written off by Germany’s traditional parties as the effect of local politics. But the result in the capital — with the Christian Democrats getting their worst results there since the end of World War II and even the winning party, the Social Democrats, attracting only 21.6 percent — means that the prospect of a fundamental shift can no longer be dismissed. Ms. Merkel’s party took just 17.6 percent. But there were several other reasons, she said, including the emergence of “a post-facts world, where people are not necessarily interested in facts, they are just following their feelings.”
The splintering of support has fueled the rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, the first party further to the right on the political spectrum than Ms. Merkel’s conservatives to earn widespread backing. The growth of Alternative for Germany appears certain to be reflected at the national level in next year’s elections. The gut-driven behavior of voters and politicians this year — most stunningly seen in Britain’s vote to leave the European Union — has upset faith in opinion polls and in institutions developed since World War II to contain the far-right or far-left thought that is now attracting populist support.
Ms. Merkel huddled early on Monday with party leaders to discuss the implications of the Berlin vote. Her party is now in just six of 16 state governments, two of those as the junior partner. After attending a summit meeting in China two weeks ago when her party suffered its third-place finish in elections in her home state, Ms. Merkel decided to skip the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week. Many Germans found their country’s chaotic response to the influx of migrants worrying to the point that they felt a threat, whether real or perceived, to their personal stability and prosperity, said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Ms. Merkel declined on Monday to say whether she would pursue a fourth term in next year’s general election, saying that it was not the right time to discuss the issue. All five of her deputies in the party have expressed support for her. Wolfgang Schäuble, her finance minister and the only member of her cabinet who would be in a realistic position to topple her, last week praised the chancellor’s handling of the refugee crisis in an interview with the public broadcaster ZDF. “To many, the German state appeared not to be capable of not handling this wave of migrants,” Ms. Stelzenmüller said. “That raised questions of safety of their own personal life. That showed, right or wrong, their country’s institutions were not as strong as people thought they are. The shock of the initial wave is still in people’s bones.”
Thomas Strobl, the leader of the Christian Democrats in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, a conservative stronghold where the party governs as the junior member of a coalition led by the Greens, expressed his conviction that Ms. Merkel would run in 2017. He defined Ms. Merkel as a “strong and internationally well-respected chancellor.” For her part, Ms. Merkel said it was vital to recognize the economic roots of insecurity, suggesting that globalization and new trade patterns could have profound effects on people, from the German farmer to the young population of Africa.
The Berlin vote, however, was the fourth consecutive state election this year in which uncertainty surrounding the chancellor’s decision to allow so many undocumented migrants into the country has resonated. Making that connection, she argued, is essential for a decent future.
Voters in the capital shifted their support to smaller parties, with the Left party winning 15.6 percent and the Greens taking 15.2 percent. Alternative for Germany was close behind, with 14.2 percent. Germany “won’t let itself be rattled to its core,” she said, adding, “That didn’t happen even in such a turning-point, indeed extremely unsettling, year as the past one.”
Many former supporters of the chancellor’s conservatives appeared to have shifted to the liberal Free Democratic Party. Voters returned the Free Democrats to the state legislature with 6.7 percent of the vote. The party failed in 2011 to reach the threshold of 5 percent needed to get seats in the legislature. “Who if not us ought to be capable of making something good of this time?” she said. “I am deeply convinced of this.”
The biggest party in Berlin, the Social Democrats, will still need the support of two other groups to form a government, with the Left and the Greens appearing to be the most likely partners. Germans in rural areas — where Christian Democrats hold more sway than in cities — are deeply worried that even if they are doing well, they have lost faith in their prospects for the future, she said.
The strongest support for Alternative for Germany in Berlin was in the eastern fringes of the city, reflecting widespread discontent in the former East Germany, where the party has seen its biggest gains. “When the young people all leave the villages, when one can only with difficulty sell one’s home,” she noted, there is drama and uncertainty “which thicken into a fear, or at the very least a worry about the future.”
“When the Alternative for Germany is able to make such a strong showing, it has a radiating effect across all of Germany,” said Georg Pazderski, the candidate in Berlin for the party. “By now we have arrived in all of Germany.” After 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the spread of freedom across Europe, she said, made it seem that Europe was on a victorious course and could not be overtaken. Now, she added, “something has developed where we notice that in the globalized world, we are not necessarily in the forefront.”