European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 1146

On July 03 2018 05:42 Mafe wrote:
Looks like we're about to become another european asshole nation.

On July 03 2018 06:00 sc-darkness wrote:


What's wrong with protecting border?

On July 03 2018 06:27 Big J wrote:


It violates Schengen, free trade and free movement within the EU.
I happened to be in my hometown at the German border the day Germany introduced border controls. It is not very funny to suddenly have every street of a small town jammed for a few days, in particular for those people who had to wait 3 hours for a 15km drive to get to work on the German side.
This obviously does have a very negative impact on European market structures and their development. That is why every politician in Europe that is thinking about more than "what measures may keep me in power" still prefers a European solution.

On July 03 2018 07:01 sc-darkness wrote:


Ok, I thought you were talking about refugees, but I'm not sure what you mean now when you say free movement within the EU. Every EU citizen goes to any EU country they want. What's the problem? Is there any news except Brexit?

On July 03 2018 06:00 sc-darkness wrote:


What's wrong with protecting border?

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel, who staked her legacy on welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants into Germany, agreed on Monday to build border camps for asylum seekers and to tighten the border with Austria in a political deal to save her government.

It was a spectacular turnabout for a leader who has been seen as the standard-bearer of the liberal European order but who has come under intense pressure at home from the far right and from conservatives in her governing coalition over her migration policy.

Although the move to appease the conservatives exposed her growing political weakness, Ms. Merkel will limp on as chancellor. For how long is unclear. The nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment that has challenged multilateralism elsewhere in Europe is taking root — fast — in mainstream German politics.

Ms. Merkel agreed to the latest policy after an insurrection over migration policy led by her interior minister, Horst Seehofer, threatened to bring down her coalition.

Mr. Seehofer demanded that Germany block migrants at the border if they have no papers, or have already registered in another European country.

Ms. Merkel, who supports free movement across Europe’s borders, has been opposed to any moves effectively resurrecting border controls until Monday night, when she made the deal to stay in power.

The new policy is subject to the approval of the Social Democrats, the third party in Ms. Merkel’s coalition.

It would establish camps, called “transit centers,” at points along the border. Newly arriving migrants would be screened in the centers, and any determined to have already applied for asylum elsewhere in the European Union would be turned back.

Under Ms. Merkel, Germany has been a bulwark against the rise of the far right in Europe and the increasing turn against migrants. Even as neighboring countries turned away those fleeing war and strife in the Middle East, she has welcomed more than a million since 2015, and lobbied for a collective European solution.

Comparing the migrant crisis to a challenge on the same scale as Germany’s postwar reconstruction and reunification, she appealed to fellow Germans that they were up to the challenge.

“We can manage,” she said famously in 2015, inspiring many to donate food, clothes and their time to help.

Since then the number of new migrants has dropped to a fraction of what it was three years ago. But the good will has been eroding as Germany has struggled to absorb those already in the country.

An ascendant far right has relentlessly pushed the narrative that the migrant crisis is continuing and that crime is up.

It is actually at a 25-year low but a series of high-profile assaults in Germany involving migrants, including the rape and killing of a 19-year-old German student and the terrorist attack on a Christmas market that killed 12 people, has helped to turn public sentiment.

Anti-migrant feelings helped lead to the rise of a far-right political party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which has put Germany’s more mainstream parties under pressure to change.

Ms. Merkel has been unable to stem the changing tide, with cascading implications for politics in Germany and Europe.

“Her political capital is depleted,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. “We are well into the final chapter of the Merkel era.”

“Under her continued leadership, Germany will be largely immobilized at home and in Europe,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff added, a dramatic change for a country that has been Europe’s political and economic anchor. “But the promise of Merkel was stability, not immobility.”

As the chancellor faces domestic challenges, she is also confronted by pressures from the Trump administration.

Over the past month, President Trump wrote sharply worded letters to Ms. Merkel and the leaders of several other NATO allies, criticizing them for spending too little on their own defense.

In his letter to Ms. Merkel, Mr. Trump said that Germany was to blame for other countries’ failure to spend enough, “because others see you as a role model.”

German postwar politics has been built around stability and consensus. Ms. Merkel governed in that tradition and became closely associated with it. She is one of only three chancellors who have run the country since 1982. And she has fended off many political opponents during her 13 years as chancellor.

When Ms. Merkel first took office in 2005, it was a different world. A year after 10 formerly Communist eastern European countries joined the European Union, the Continent was still rife with idealism. Ms. Merkel, a pastor’s daughter and trained scientist who had grown up in Communist East Germany, was not only the first woman but the first easterner to lead her reunified country.

She steered Germany through a period of power and prosperity even as economic and political fires broke out abroad. Once in a while she veered from her calm-bordering-on-boring protocol; there were even times when she made radical decisions.

She announced the end of nuclear power production after the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan. She was determined to keep Greece inside the eurozone, even at the cost of painful austerity policies.

In last September’s election, Ms. Merkel’s conservatives recorded their worst postwar result. It took two tries, negotiations with six other parties, nearly six months and a lot of concessions to political rivals to form a government.

In the vote, the AfD emerged as the third-strongest force in the German Parliament and the main opposition party.

Its rise has helped shrink the support base of the once mighty Social Democrats, and opened a rift in Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, or C.D.U., between those who stand by the chancellor’s liberal worldview and those who want her gone and yearn for a more traditional conservatism.

Above all, the AfD’s rise has sharply shifted the powerful and already very conservative state of Bavaria to the right. Mr. Seehofer’s tough stand on migrants is seen in part as a bid to protect his party’s right flank.

Even now, diminished and fighting political rebellions, Ms. Merkel made it clear on Monday that she is determined to battle on for those values that for many years made her one of the most popular politicians at home and abroad. But she also tried to put the best face on her concession.

“The security of our country begins on our borders,” the chancellor told reporters after meeting for several hours with the leaders of her party and those of Mr. Seehofer’s Bavarian conservatives.

She described the measure as simultaneously a national action to secure Germany’s borders, but in cooperation with the European Union partner countries that the refugees are coming from.

But Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff saw it differently.

“What looks like a power struggle surrounding Ms. Merkel, behind this is actually a conflict about the integrity of the European project,” he said. “The four freedoms of the E.U. can no longer be enforced. We can’t agree on freedom of movement of refugees and immigrants; the whole system has ceased to function.”

On July 03 2018 07:35 Dav1oN wrote:


Honestly - everything is wrong since there is no such thing as border, but that's just my futuristic view
+ Show Spoiler +

On July 03 2018 15:08 LegalLord wrote:
Her tenure has shown that she’s nothing if not opportunistic. From “open the floodgates” to this, hardly a matter at all.

The opposition doesn’t really seem strong or united enough to outright defeat her, though. I expect more of the same for quite a while longer.

On July 03 2018 15:32 SoSexy wrote:


Thanks for the laugh. This thread surely has some hidden pearls in it.

Also, Italy's new government surely started to have an effect on the EU. Good.

On July 03 2018 15:36 schaf wrote:


The opposition cannot defeat her without one of the governing parties. Which brings us to the SPD, the party that was picked on for ages after the election by the media and politicians because "we need a stable government!" Or "You have a duty to govern!"

Afaik the SPD didn't agree to having these centres put up earlier albut now wouldn't say no in order to stay in the government (=in order for CDU/CSU to not break up). So in my view the end result is a weakening of this party, as always.

On July 03 2018 07:15 Big J wrote:


How do you find a refugee at a border without limiting the movement for everyone? The reality is one of waiting times, controls and surveillance for everyone at the border, which is a violation of Schengen.

On July 03 2018 17:55 Ghostcom wrote:


The border controls that are currently established are not in violation of Schengen as they are temporary and to protect the internal integrity and security of the countries which have established them (as specifically established as legal in the Schengen agreement article 25). Stop lying.

Since January 2016 Denmark has turned away more than 5000 people at their borders as a consequence. It's not all just "populist" politics despite what you try and make it seem.

On July 03 2018 15:08 LegalLord wrote:
Her tenure has shown that she’s nothing if not opportunistic. From “open the floodgates” to this, hardly a matter at all.

The opposition doesn’t really seem strong or united enough to outright defeat her, though. I expect more of the same for quite a while longer.

On July 03 2018 16:58 Big J wrote:


Your post is a perfect demonstration of what's wrong with the right. There are no physical borders, at best you can create obstacles. The biggest obstacles so far have been travel distance and uncertainty. Modern technology has eliminated both of them.
And now what? We should waste our economic capabilities and potential on getting rid of the technological progress again? Stop all transports, stop networking and information for some ancient idea of national states that you don't want to give up?

On July 03 2018 18:09 Toadesstern wrote:

yeah agree. I mean opportunistic is how you call it, her supporters would say she's willing to jump over her own shadow and do what her voters (or germans in generell) want instead of hardlining something she feels like she needs to do.
Same with nuclear a couple years ago. Merkel was a really big supporter of nuclear energy. Then fukushima happened and people in Germany felt really shitty about nuclear power. She didn't get into office with this image of a "green" chancelor, she got it during her years in office because she changed her positions into that direction after realizing that it's a good wagon to be on.

I just don't see an alternative on the horizon.
As much as Danglars probably wants it the AfD is polling in the 15% range and not in the 50% they need to govern.
The CDU is still heads ahead of everyone else, Seehofer has lost way more in this than Merkel did (even though it hurt both), and I don't see anyone rising up to the task either. Neither someone new in the CDU nor someone elsewhere (I'm looking at you SPD).
The SPD also seems to have it hard in this political climate just for the sake of being politically to the left of the CDU. This whole idea that Merkel will be dethroned and the right will rise (if we're believing our ambassador to the US in germany) just completly falls apart the moment you realize that all the alternatives are politically to the left of her and that we tend to need coalitions for governments over here.
Even if the AfD somehow gets tons of voters, they'll never get 50+ % in a 6 party stystem which means they'd have to team up with someone and we're back at step1.

I feel the only realistic way for this to change is a shift to left. And I don't see that happen in the current political climate.