Angela Merkel is in serious trouble. That might sound like a surprise to many people. She's spent years as Europe's uncontested power broker, with a seemingly unassailable position in German politics — leading the centre-right Christian Democrats for 15 years, and leading her nation for 10. Recently, she's being praised around the world for her open-arms approach to the refugee crisis that's overwhelming Europe's flimsy central governance. Betting markets even had her as the favourite for the Nobel peace prize. But at home, Merkel is starting to struggle, and it looks like support for Germany's welcoming of hundreds of thousands of refugees may be wilting. At Deutsche Welle, the country's public broadcaster, editor Felix Steiner is calling it the "twilight of Merkel's chancellorship." For the first time since the beginning of her current term in office, her ratings have slipped below a figure from Germany's mainstream centre-left party, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He's a member of the governing coalition, in the position of foreign minister. That also puts her behind finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a member of her own party. It's perhaps not a coincidence that Steinmeier and Sigmar Gabriel, who led the social democrats into the 2013 election, are now cooling on Germany's refugee policy, saying that the country cannot integrate more than a million asylum seekers each year. Since September, the proportion of Germans who say they're worried about the number of refugees coming to Germany has leapt above 50%. Though the euro crisis years presented a tremendous economic challenge for the monetary union, Germany made recovery look easy, and Merkel's domination of German politics was even solidified. Strangely, though the crisis now seems to be over (or at least dormant), Merkel is facing a serious political struggle. It still seems that if an election was conducted today, Merkel would return victorious. In fact, her Christian Democrat party has demonstrated an astonishing domination of the country's politics — just take a look at the polls since the 2013 election. But it's less clear what will happen over the longer term. In August, the German government estimated that 800,000 refugees would arrive in the country. The United Nations says a million people seeking asylum will arrive in 2016. More seem to wish to travel to Germany than anywhere else in Europe. Germany is now cemented in the minds of people around the world as the most welcoming destination for refugees. Those that have already arrived may (entirely reasonably) want their families to follow on. Those who haven't already made the dangerous crossing to Europe would understandably want to go where their friends and neighbours have gone. If Merkel is now losing support for her decisions over migration, it is going to be difficult or impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. Germany will demand that other European countries pull their weight, but the weak institutions that govern the EU have little power to compel countries to take refugees. A financial penalty of 0.002% of GDP has been suggested for countries refusing to take migrants. That would mean a country like Poland, with an economy over $1 trillion in size paying about $23 million — a statistical irrelevance. The situation also causes a fiscal headache for Germany. Nearly half a million refugees could be added to benefit rolls, according to labour minister Andrea Nahles. In the short-term, that could end the country's efforts to run a balanced budget, another popular policy. Optimistic suggestions that refugees will help to ease Germany's demographic squeeze are also unlikely to work in the short and medium-term. Even for those refugees arriving with the language skills to work in the country, the law will prohibit them from working until their asylum claims are processed. It is far less common in Syria for women to work, with female labour participation below 20% before the country's civil war began, as opposed to over 50% in Germany. A trickle of very small-scale but potentially very damaging stories have also started to circulate — like the handful of tenants in municipal housing being evicted to make room for refugees. None of this is any fault of the Syrians and others arriving across the Mediterranean, who were led to believe that they would be welcomed with open arms. Life in a prosperous European country with the opportunity of work (eventually) is infinitely preferable to life in Syria for millions of people, and the stagnant halfway-house of a Turkish or Jordanian refugee camp is also extremely uninviting. Merkel is not known for her radicalism, pursuing safety-first policies at almost every turn, and it seems like she did not expect the popular support for taking in refugees to evaporate so quickly. The situation is a strange reversal of Merkel's previous position. While she has been heavily criticised outside Germany for her handling of Greece's economic crisis, and is seen as the head cheerleader of the eurozone's austerity policies, those positions haven't dented her popularity at home. In fact, they're overwhelmingly popular. Now, the tables have turned, and a policy that's gaining her plaudits from around the world could end up seriously damaging her domestic strength. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here are some incredible things you didn’t know about Putin's life
 |
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.businessinsider.com |