Europe’s migration crisis is hurtling towards a potentially defining turning point this month, with the pillars of the EU’s policy under sustained assault and German chancellor Angela Merkel facing the first electoral test of her refugee policy.
EU leaders are preparing for an emergency migration summit on Monday against the backdrop of desperate scenes at the Greece-Macedonia border, where crowds of migrants were beaten back from storming a fence with a salvo of tear gas. influx this spring and summer.
Ms Merkel is beset on all sides domestically and isolated abroad. The arrival of 1.1m refugees into Germany has eroded her once soaring popularity and that of her governing CDU/CSU bloc.
The CDU is bracing itself for a poor showing in three state elections scheduled for March 13 that have turned into a referendum on the chancellor’s refugee strategy. The upstart Alternative für Deutschland, a rightwing populist party which wants to close the border, is polling strongly: and critics within Ms Merkel’s own party are demanding a change of course.
Some diplomats in Brussels suggest that such a change is already under way. There remains a dissonance in messages from Berlin. Diplomats noted the “radically” different tone of German interior minister Thomas de Maizière at the meeting of home affairs ministers in Brussels last week. But in public, Berlin is sticking to Ms Merkel’s policy, based primarily on an EU deal with Turkey to crack down on people smuggling across the Aegean, insisting there is “no plan B”.
Two crucial meetings in a fortnight — the EU-Turkey talks on March 7 and an EU migration summit on March 18 and 19 — will dictate whether it succeeds.
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