Angela Merkel’s great merit as a politician is her ability to reform Germany without scaring its notably timid citizens. For a decade she has been regarded as the safest pair of hands in Europe, a guarantor of stability at home and abroad. Her governing rationale was seen as authentic by German voters because it was so intimately bound up with her biography. Mrs Merkel experienced the collapse of the East German state firsthand and she has been clear in her determination that neither the united Germany nor the European Union should falter.
Germany, however, finds itself at the hub of three existential crises for Europe and the strain is beginning to show on its chancellor. The break-up of the eurozone has been narrowly avoided but the currency remains sickly, Greece unpredictable and the tension between Europe’s creditors and debtors all too apparent. A second crisis — the fracture with Vladimir Putin’s Russia after his land-grab of Crimea — has also, with German mediation, been put on ice rather than resolved.
Now the third challenge is consuming Germany, eroding the chancellor’s popular support and raising questions about the national future that Mrs Merkel seems unwilling or unable to answer. At the start of the immigrant wave the chancellor was confronted on television by a refugee from Lebanon. The girl cried as she explained that her family would probably be denied residence. Mrs Merkel comforted her but emphasised that Germany could not take in everybody.
That was in July and Mrs Merkel seemed to be in accord with her citizens. A few weeks later, the chancellor appeared to have changed her mind. Syrians who made it to Germany should be allowed to stay. “Germany is a strong culture,” she said, “We can do this.” Her calculation was that the situation in Europe was now analogous to 1989, when hundreds of thousands of East Germans fled westwards, sparking a spirit of solidarity and essentially creating a national identity.
Germany in 1989, however, is not the European Union in 2015. The idea that this gesture could become a galvanising moment for Europe, restoring faith in the integrative power of the EU, was mistaken. A YouGov poll suggested yesterday that 56 per cent of Germans thought asylum seeker numbers were too high. Only 19 per cent believed that it was feasible to take more. With some forecasts indicating that 1.5 million migrants could enter Germany this year, the country is in quiet revolt against Mrs Merkel’s miscalculated generosity.
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The large majority enjoyed by her grand coalition of Christian and Social Democrats is looking vulnerable. Under pressure from her Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union, she is now backing transit zones — essentially detention centres allowing genuine asylum seekers to be filtered from economic migrants — on the country’s southern borders. The Social Democrats compare the centres to concentration camps and vow to scupper the scheme.
Germany’s much praised “Welcome Culture” is thus having to wrestle with the reality of the vast refugee numbers. Germans look to Mrs Merkel for leadership but are confused by her zig-zag between policies. For the doughty German chancellor, the migrant influx seems like a crisis too far. The governing coalition is wobbling, local councils are overwhelmed. Mrs Merkel is struggling, and so too is Europe.