Michaels government to the brink of collapse and Big Questions are now being asked about how her cocoa allision can possibly Work Together in the weeks and months to come so our question here on quadriga this week is german stability a thing of the past question mark and to discuss that question im joined here in the studio by three astute observers of german politics beginning with Matthew Condon chief european correspondent at politico and matthew argues the german politics is becoming less and fuller a not less stable theres a good name he says for the type of confrontation weve seen in berlin over the past few weeks and that name that is democracy also with us is derek scally of the irish times who says germany stability obsession has done more harm than good to democracy in the merkel era more flexibility will bring fresh air fresh thinking and fresh problems into the political game interesting stuff in a very warm. To. The head of w. s Domestic Politics Department nina believes the anti immigrant alternative to germany policy is the only winner in the current government crisis is bad news for chance of a makeover and bad news for the team you. Look at it let me begin with you weve seen this clash of titans here in german politics these last couple of weeks whats it all been about and where does it leave us its all been about power its about been positioning and its a been vote impatiens america has been in power for almost thirteen years and theres a backlog of young men who some seem to think that they are best placed to replace her and we have young one young man well not so and fifty three down and very moccasin he is going to lecture coming up in october and he thinks on this he gives the american a whack the voters are going to give him a whack in october on the migration quest for three years theyve been sort of the conservatives down to very few theyve been cow towing to america and now they need to go back even though the migration present really isnt a crisis anymore but they feel they need to set a sign so they decided to see so the migration crisis isnt a crisis and what everybody outside germany would would would say yes it is its the big crisis in germany interest in terms of numbers if you if you are worried about five or ten or twenty people coming across and seeking asylum a very every day with an is a crisis around europe it is a crisis but compared to where we were inches in fifteen in terms of pure numbers it isnt a crisis the notion that it just sort of two weeks ago suddenly became a crisis again i think that was an artificial crisis and what we saw was the c. S. U. The Summer Holidays are coming up this is the last chance to really get peoples attention before the autumn and give them the sense that we are tough we have started to marco so i think what we saw was just politics that it has the is an unresolved migration crisis is true and that its gotten the rest of your talking about or perhaps was an unintended positive outcome the see if you will came this is what we intended all along its not about power its about we are were just were worried about europe i doubt very much i wonder what we need to say about all the unseemly and damaging for the whole political culture inside. Critics is that you know do dirks downplaying it some are saying this is a real challenge to germanys political culture the way this battle is being fought i owed yeah and the interesting thing is that like we said earlier im convinced that the only winner in this. Unseemly debate and theres public rao that was unnecessarily harsh is the anti immigrant day and the interesting thing is that they didnt have to do anything theyve entered they entered parliament in last years federal elections with some twelve percent or so of supporting the strongest dont get me the stuff in government exactly and vocal force in parliament and of course you can say that democracy is alive yes since theyve entered Parliament Debates alive in the bundestag but since they know their support according to latest polls has risen to some sixteen percent and this is something where you have to say will they stop that migration or will they not choose different topics in the future now that theyve got the conservatives to essentially take on and dumped that topics will they stop that will will they will they go and talk about the euro talk about housing which is a big problem in some big germans you just give off a sense of the language they have to has been using this past week or so theyve been if you think theyve been talking about hunting they said that at the very night they Enter Parliament for the first time were going to hunt the government im going to go and hunt and go machall and then at the height of this current government crisis they stood there and said look were one thing. Sends a shiver down the spine of the. Rest to the clash between say who for america has been described as a fossil charade laughable selfdelusion what do you make of it all. Well i think it was probably inevitable given where the c. S. U. Has been on this issue all along i mean if you go back to two thousand and fifteen and remember this is something that started when americal failed to inform sable for that she was going to let in these refugees who had been trapped in in hungary and that were many of them on their way on foot by austria to germany and she failed to inform him as often said the whole city who for took the phone off the hook and went to bed early well whoever knows the details you would have to soon the chancellor of germany would have ways to get into touch with her Coalition Partners if you know if you need to and you know you get the sense that this is very personal this dispute between the two of them and i think thats something that came out this week as well as some of the comments that say hold for made such as im not going to let you know this this woman fired me i made her chancellor in this discussion of thing which would seem slightly gratuitous because that was said just before they reached this does come from i so you can really feel i think also when you see the two of them together that theres no love lost between the two of them theyve been colleagues in various positions for the past thirty years so i think that at some point this was always going to explode this dynamic between the two of them and it happened this week ok lets just listen in for a moment and hear what the two protagonists have been saying just get a flavor of the place that makes this possibly cause. This can all go with this the spirit of partnership in the European Union is retained and a decisive step is taken to organize and guide secondary migration this is what has been and is important to me. Is the zip. Code this clear agreement which conforms to my beliefs on all three points a law is made to continue to carry out the office of federal minister of the interior for building and Community Like a few of you. Just picking up on what you were saying matthew to you this past week i mean ive written down how the coalition is being characterized feuds backstabbing rebellion infighting on a mostly i could go on how can they possibly Work Together in the weeks to come where germany does face really big challenges well i would be surprised if say who believes at some point in the near future i dont think that the coalition itself will fall apart because they all have too much at stake here and they all fear new elections because they would all suffer if new elections were called so i do i do think that the the c. D. U. Miracles party and say over part of the sea as you will continue most likely without without say over at some point in the near future also because he alienated a lot of people in his own ranks on sunday by you know now saying that he was planning to resign which was really caught caught a lot of people off guard i think at the end of this episode the details of this compromise i dont think are are that significant in the long term its very complicated i dont think that you know miracle gave up that much to be honest i mean this this story about these transit zones that theyre setting up this is something that she first proposed in two thousand and fifteen so its an idea that that she herself came up with at the time it was it was not possible because the social democrats at the time said no they dont want to have these camps on the borders so they found this compromise it sounds you know very very dramatic to people but i think at the end of the day what the what the bavarians really what it is in this Election Campaign that derek. I spoke about is to be able to point to their voters to these camps that are going to be set up at the border and say look weve established these refugee camps never mind that the numbers there are actually quite modest i think seven hundred people actually applied for asylum on the german austrian border last year which is which is which is not a lot and they must he says the. Alienated a lot of people by the way hes been behaving this past week or two well see it in his own party as well isnt part of the mother was there was you know there was bare fury against poncy. Just a couple of days ago but also i think an awful lot of women were alienated from the way wholesale first being behaving you know you mentioned it matthew talking about you know effectively i made her chancellor and also say from his arms up in the air and saying i cant the power to say and he was reported twice have said i cant work with this woman what do you make of all of us a woman. Or as a citizen i think you know there were lots of people whether or not they voted for medical doesnt really matter who said you just cant talk to a fellow politician like this theres just no way of of dealing with this problem and its just it was just so transparent that this was a power struggle and this was not like theyre trying to sell us now this was not about the details of a deal that would have solved a problem that we have at. Least sixty nine percent of germans sam my view that this is something where he should have he said if resigned you know you because he took it so far because he let it escalate and in view of what he was saying very clear what theres a word in german its a fascinating one of these big long german words put it into a draw some disenchantment disgruntlement this illusion mint with politics how much do you think that has been stoked in the last couple of weeks and how much will that feed into growing poll think as increasing poll figures for the area of the alternative to germany oh i think so well i wouldnt worry too much i mean summers come. So i think most people are on the beaches i dont think theyre watching the news and so on so its pretty much a sort of wake me up when this is over and is it over and did anything change and so on but i do to i think we have been witnessing something the last few years and thats what i said my introductory statement that sort of its like water is very slowly in there under this. Is the journey where its like its washing away some of the foundations and i dont think the ability this ability we are talking about here i dont really believe its a stable im starting to see. Ive always said and i think it was. With them churchill said in germany the truth the germans there are there are your uncles are at your throat and i think what hes trying to say was always this pendulum in this sort of tension between self self safina self satisfaction and self loathing and we saw this week in the german magazine der spiegel there once was a stable country which is literally ridiculous i mean theyre talking just because they left a football on the cars are you know cheating their customers or Car Companies and now this political crisis and i do wonder that maybe people will over over worry about whats actually going on were in a period of transition in germany just like the rest of the world i think germany has been questioned from a lot of whats been going on for the last ten years have been germany didnt have a real financial crisis is a period of transition from wall to wall well i think this is this is the big question are we is germany going to become one of the mainstream countries where youve got this battle between you know unit officers multilateralism is is it sort of Germany First i mean the bavarians thats what i think their long term game is they have sort of area first a block well very Germany First in the leader down there on some conservatives appear in berlin are saying this market notion of thats all be friends Holding Hands and come up with a compromise or three in the morning is ridiculous we go in and we bang on the table there are young men in german politics who believe that now and they i think the long term what were seeing here is actually a cultural clash between does germany continue to moderate politics where tries to get as many people on board and try to you me they just a few people as possible or do you go in and throw your weight around and because they see trump doing it they see other countries doing it and they want a bit of the action i think thats the battle were actually. Seeing on thats what worries me slightly more on that people whether people are saying that now i worry that people will start reading newspapers this very term is unstable germany is in crisis it isnt just because journalists think i dont really agree with you. Well i agree i dont i dont think that its in crisis i i think though its worth noting that one of the conclusions one could make from the past couple of weeks is that this little rebellion that we saw from the c. S. U. And from some of the young men as you call them and Miracles Party really failed and i think there is still a consensus in germany and a centrist consensus they dont want to go to the unilateral approach as trump has done and as the varians appeared to be pushing for. You know all the polls suggest that the germans from maine committed to the e. U. They may remain committed to all of these multilateral institutions the United Nations and so forth so if this was an attempt to kind of push germany a different direction it really failed and you know i think what it what this whole. You know situation has shown to me is that this question of migration which is dominated going to see this sort of Political Landscape for the last couple of years remains unresolved thats what this is about and this was sort of a symbol of that it was a manufactured crisis yes but it was possible to manufacture it because merkel has still not resolved you know this question of migration and i think that this was less about the people who were coming than it is about the people who are already here you know the one million plus who have come over the past couple of years and the sort of fears that many germans have about that and thats what the taps into and i so disagree with you on the other issues i dont think that they have any other issues and if you look at other populist parties around europe this is what they have in common with the f. T. Is that you know they all kind of hew to this to this question of migration and what can be you know how they can use that. To kind of instill fear in people and when theyve tried other issues such as the euro they have to actually started as an antihero party did pretty well for a while and then you know fell down into the low Single Digits and it wasnt until two thousand and fifteen with the refugee crisis that they shot back up and thats where theyve been ever since so i think until medical somehow finds a solution to the refugee question in germany this is going to continue im sorry but i think we have to talk about the fact that the. When we talk about migration we mean refugees and migrants at the same time still here in germany which is something that eighty eight a lot of people because when were talking about the right to asylum this is something that no citizen questions you know people who are in need off protection they need to be protected here but whats happening at the moment is that all of the problems that have arisen since weve had lots of people come here and claim all apply for asylum here simply because there are no other ways into germany there have been problems and were not dealing with them in a separate way to the asylum issue itself so you know they are beginning to talk about the need for an Immigration Law now ive lost you know off to decades of they actually being necessary but what is happening is that theyre all people are saying ok we cant even talk about the problems that we have with new arrivals here because then everybody will accuse us of of being anti immigrant all xenophobia cueva but theyre all problems and we just need to talk about ways of integrating those who have a right to stay here and then of giving protection to people who need to be protected but also of keeping people out to just have no way of living here picking up on what youre saying and going back to Matthew Matthew from politico your publication your outlet says this week the dehumanization of europe is on the mom and my my response to that was you know is germany is the merkel government actually contributing now to the dehumanization of europe well i didnt write that and i. Actually disagree with that a lot of voices that. I dont think that she has contributed to and i think you know this is a fairly pragmatic approach and i think a lot of people have you know completely misread what shes done here i dont think this is a an about face at all as i said shes the one who first suggested the solution with these transit zones number one and number two if you look at whats happen. Since two thousand and fifteen with merkels government and the way that it has you know gradually tightened the asylum rules theyve been to asylum packages as they call them the rules have become much more stringent than they were in two thousand and fifteen she hasnt been out there you know giving speeches about it hasnt drawn a lot of attention to it but it is today much more difficult as a refugee to get asylum in germany than it was in two thousand and fifteen so i think that this is a another step that you know at least superficially appears to you know tight tighten the rules a bit but in substance it certainly is not a major departure from her previous policies and i dont think that shes dehumanizing europe at all i think that you know there is a practicality issue and i think that you know this is what sort of the Mainstream German looks at the situation and thinks well you know yes we we know need to provide people asylum we want to help but theres sort of limits to what we can do and this is sort of the tension in this debate and has been from the beginning thank you for those coming to bring you in just a moment because you were talking earlier about whether the germany is entering a phase of malays or not you were rather skeptical about that a lot of people here in germany not just in the media to believe that you know germany is entering abilities to look. Back when the world was still intact september two thousand and thirteen when germanys conservative partys one and almost absolute majority in the elections cd you had im going to maclin her c. S. U. Counterpart or see how far were through. Now disenchantment has set in and not only in politics. The Diesel Scandal has devastated trust in germanys manufacturing might be w. And audi but also mercedes and other brands have been affected new technologies were ignored by management tendon stead emissions results were falsified. Dr banks image has suffered two bad loans three years of losses it was the only bank to fail the us stress. Test now its counting on a leadership change. And what else oh yeah the germans cant even play soccer anymore the current reigning champion crashed out of this years world cup in the group stage with the worst showing in their group is the team and its leadership too old to satisfy it to self aggrandizing germany in the summer of twenty eighteen the country have a problem with its elites. Going there it but here it does the protocol is it mismanaged business politics is there a crisis with the german at least some of you loose i mean you know when you win the world cup like you that you want to win the world cup for the your vision song contest next time it is quite low and yes they probably could have done better but my god i mean the pressure these people are on the to have to deliver every time you know i would say the car the car crisis was collusion between the car industry and politics they knew it was a problem the politicians have put them under pressure to deliver clean diesel which isnt clearly isnt possible and then they realize we have to work at each other so i do think theres a problem there but ive ive been here for almost twenty years and ive seen these sort of cassandra journalist me along saying you know can germany be saved on that always works well in talk shows because the person says well maybe itll be ok seems hopelessly naive but what i have learned in twenty years in germany is that germans dont react at the first alarm bell and they dont react at the second alarm bell but somewhere between the second and the third and final alarm bell somebody goes over jesus we have to do something and something happens i dont know if its marital whos the person who will have to react shes known for being able to jump off the diving board and in her Swimming Lesson or acted politics just at the last moment im starting to wonder if you know shes just like lots of people shes had a lot of a long crisis filled run and shes done some good things for extraordinary things in europe in terms of stability that maybe she needs to move whether she realizes that herself but this notion that germany itself is you know one swallow doesnt make a summer in three disasters does. Make you know a catastrophe you know its not the apocalypse you know its always very fashionable to say germany is in crisis and out of all these things and theyre speaking to that this week and stirred furiously and a lot of people swallow it and say oh yes it must be true you know a plus people see it was that whatever. You know i agree that there is a risk that you overestimate the effects of football. But at the same time i would say that lots of people here in germany and probably an increasing amount of feel disenfranchised they feel like the politicians are no longer dealing with the real issues you know weve weve established that there are no big amounts of migrants coming into germany at the moment and they say if you dont have it you get exactly because they dont even have to deliver a solution because everybody else all the other parties are involved in their own middlings the social democrats it will be a perfect opportunity for them to now say ok this is our stance on migration this is what we want for the future this is how were going to solve your problems when it comes to care for the elderly this is what were going to do for families etc then not delivering so only if he have to do is say weve got a problem with and i disagree with you that migration is the only the only issue that they have you know because they dont have solutions they just need to name the problems that people have. Well i would just say i think its an issue that resonates most in germany and in other countries i mean one of the things that interested me about the german discussion is that the germans are sort of discovering slowly what it means to have a successful populist party is successful far right party and everybodys like really shocked you know if you look around the rest of europe its been going on for quite some time and there wasnt a of d. Politician last week when when germany lost who posted on facebook or twitter a picture of mazen the german player who has turkish roots and there was a bit of a controversy involving some photographs that he had taken together with for the for the world cup and theres a politician essentially blamed for this and said you know suggested he should be sent back to turkey and a lot of people are very upset about that this is kind of thing that has been going on in france its been going on in austria the netherlands you know for many years so i think that you know if anything the Political Landscape here is sort of catching catching up a bit to to to to the rest of europe but you know go back to what derek said about you know is this you know the end of german stability. You know i think its definitely becoming becoming less stable and while its not a catastrophe i do think that there are signs in the economy in particular that this kind of second economic miracle that germanys been going through over the past few years is coming to an end lets give him a weve got about a minute to go terry before and i want to hear what you have to say about all of that because you were at the beginning of the show said germany has a stability obsession you implied that that should become a thing of the past or they should shake the obsession off and you suggested that that would lead to fresh air fresh thinking fresh partners that intrigued me tell me more and i think im going to mark a little bit like i heard a lot more parenting this is where a parent moves ahead of the child and all obstacles out of the way germans for the last ten or fifteen years havent had to worry about politics they have not to worry about whats going on in the world. Ok whatever you think old you know shes leaving ill tell you when you need to wake up well its time to wake up i think you are starting to realize that its time to really engage with politics again and that can only be a good thing because having a surge of greece to do everything for you thats like a very very soft dictatorship i dont think thats good for any democracy and im for germany ok thank you very much for those comments i really would like to have her move has been great stuff fascinating i hope we continue at home some food for thought of this week german stability a thing of the possible enjoy the show come back next week five churches. Cards lawyer. Culture. Cutting hair. Superman. Superfood stylish dialogue come on dont let os. Life style youre a. Thirty minute strong. Im not proud of them they will not succeed in dividing us out not succeed in taking the people off the streets because were tired of just dictatorship. Taking the stand global news that matters d. W. Made for mines. Make your sport t. V. Smarter with the t w force majeure. What you want when you want it up to date extraordinary. To decide whats on sunday no more. Costs more t. V. Climate change. Waste. Pollution. Isnt it time for good. Eco africa people and projects that are changing no one parent for the better its up to us to make a difference people in africa. Magazine d w. All we can be the generation that ends it good malaria must millions can live. You know all three parties in german chancellor Angela Merkels Coalition Government have agreed on measures to counter illegal migration the issue had bought the government almost to the brink of collapse under ten dollars leader of the junior Coalition Partners the social democrats said that a good solution had now been reached
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