In Dachau, Germany, a camp for migrants opened last year in a residential neighborhood.
WSJ
German Welcome for Migrants Cools, Eroding Angela Merkel’s Standing
http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-welcome-for-migrants-cools-eroding-angela-merkels-standing-1457714259Dimming enthusiasm for the chancellor’s open door to refugees will be measured in three state elections on Sunday
By Zeke Turner | Photographs by Alexa Vachon for The Wall Street Journal
BERLIN—When migrants began pouring into Germany last fall, Andreas Tölke decided to host some of the newcomers in his spacious Berlin apartment.
With authorities struggling to accommodate the flow, the former social worker took in asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, sometimes a dozen at a time, letting them sleep on his Armani/Casa leather sofa and use the $30-an-ounce Etro Patchouly cologne in his bathroom.
At the start of this year, he asked his last guests to leave.
“I just can’t anymore,” Mr. Tölke said. “I need a place where I can close my door and I don’t have people sitting in my apartment.”
Six months ago, Germans rallied behind Chancellor Angela Merkel ’s decision to throw the doors open to hundreds of thousands of migrants stranded in Eastern Europe. Today, the hospitality is wearing thin. As hundreds more arrive each day, Germans worry the influx will permanently change their towns and seed crime or terror. Ms. Merkel’s power base, the centrist middle class sometimes called the Mittelschicht, is growing estranged from her and her generous policy.
How badly will become clearer Sunday when three states hold elections. Based on current polling, the voting will propel Alternative for Germany, a three-year-old anti-immigration group known as AfD, into all three state legislatures and make it Germany’s third-most-popular party.
About a million foreigners entered Germany last year from places such as the Middle East and Africa, a mix of war refugees and economic migrants seeking opportunity. Deft organization and an army of volunteers helped Germany stay on top of the flow, avoiding so far a scenario many economists predict: higher spending, unemployment and taxes.
Yet this is migration on a grand scale, the largest Europe has seen in decades. It amounts to a real-time experiment in how one of the world’s greatest democracies will be affected by a vast inflow of people different in culture, attitudes, skills and economic status.
Ms. Merkel faces no imminent threat to her rule. Even with her popularity sharply diminished, it exceeds that of many ruling politicians around Europe, and she faces no obvious rival.
Threat of instability
Yet analysts warn that mounting political fragmentation could make Europe’s largest democracy less stable, more introverted and less inclined to play the regional leadership role it has assumed since the end of the last decade. If AfD enters the federal parliament next year, it could become difficult for any two German parties, including the two biggest now ruling together, to form a government.
“If the center-right and -left mainstay parties—the classic anchors of middle-of-the-road, middle-class politics in Germany—become so weak that not even a grand coalition builds a center that is stable any longer, then we have an earthquake in the party system,” said Jan Techau, director of the European arm of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
At a recent campaign event for Ms. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union in Rhineland-Palatinate, one of the states voting Sunday, the crowd was waiting for the chancellor’s motorcade. Christel Hunsicker, 75 years old, and leaning on a cane, said she supported Ms. Merkel until a year ago, then changed her mind.
“The problems started, and she just failed to deal with them,” Ms. Hunsicker said.
In the crowd, a young protester held a sign that read “Merkel Farewell Tour 2016/2017.”
Six months ago, Christian Democratic Union candidate Julia Klöckner, a 43-year-old who has drawn comparisons to a young Ms. Merkel, looked as if she would easily topple the state’s center-left premier. Today, having lost six points in the polls, Ms. Klöckner leads by just a hair.
In another state, Baden-Württemberg, the CDU has lost a 13-point September lead and now trails the Green Party. In the third state that is voting, Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU is expected to maintain control but surveys show AfD support rising rapidly to at least 18%.
The center-left newspaper Die Zeit riffed on the slippage in Ms. Merkel’s popularity with a montage of the chancellor balancing on a crumbling party logo. The headline: “A people’s party fears the people.”
From 75% last spring, her popularity tumbled nearly 30 points before recovering somewhat at the end of February. The survey found 59% of Germans dissatisfied with her refugee policy.
Ms. Merkel hasn’t admitted to any mistakes at home. Instead, she continues to hunt for solutions outside Europe’s borders. Last Sunday night in Brussels she hatched a tentative deal with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to improve efforts to catch migrants who try to reach the EU’s border in Greece illegally and send them back across the Aegean Sea.
Losing the Center
A majority of Germans reject Angela Merkel's refugee policy, with the opposition cutting through party lines.
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