Germany’s dogmatic imposition of fiscal austerity on recession-ridden EU countries and its frightening handling of Greece have been painful examples of absurd and insensitive policies. It has also strengthened the hand of Euro-skeptic political movements, such as the “Italy First” government in Rome which is hostile to the EU.
The last straw was the German attempt to dump its self-inflicted and unmanageable immigration problems on the rest of the EU. What we are seeing now is that what goes around comes around. The mismanagement of the EU economy and the calamitous immigration blunders have led to Germany’s escalating political crises.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative alliance, made up of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Socialist Party (CSU) — together unofficially known as the Union — is falling apart. The latest opinion polls, reported last Thursday, show that the Union finds favor with only 29 percent of voters — a record low and down one percentage point from a previous poll in early July.
The Union’s coalition partner, SPD (The Social Democratic Party of Germany), remained at its record low of 18 percent, which means that only 47 percent of Germans are ready to vote for the current government coalition.
Germany now has a federal government with a dismal approval rating of 25 percent in a recent poll and no parliamentary majority if an election were called today.
Particularly serious is the situation with the CSU party, which two months before the elections in Bavaria on October 14, was polling at 39 percent and looked almost certain to lose control of the state government.
A new, and probably terminal, government crisis could erupt at any moment.
Merkel keeps insisting on a “European solution” — which does not exist — to an intractable immigration problem she created. Her bitter opponent, the powerful Interior Minister and leader of the CSU, Horst Seehofer, wants a radical and expedient “national solution” because the neighboring states Austria and Italy don’t want to cooperate for fear of getting stuck with migrants that Germany intends to throw out.
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