Courtesy of Mish.
Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, and someone of high enough ranking to actually matter, has had enough of chancellor Angela Merkel’s reckless refugee crisis.
In his second attack on Merkel in a week, Schäuble Warns of Refugee “Avalanche”.
Germany may be facing “an avalanche” of refugees triggered by “careless” actions, Wolfgang Schäuble, the country’s powerful finance minister, has warned in a thinly-veiled criticism of his boss, chancellor Angela Merkel.
“You can trigger avalanches when a rather careless skier goes on to the slope … and moves a bit of snow,” said the 73-year-old finance minister at an economic conference on Wednesday evening. “I don’t know whether we are already at the stage where the avalanche has reached the valley or whether we are [still] on first third of the slope [and there is more to come].”
It was Mr Schäuble’s second attack on Ms Merkel’s refugee policy in a week. On Sunday he defended interior minister Thomas de Maizière after Mr de Maizière was forced by Ms Merkel to withdraw plans for denying most Syrian refugees rights to bring their families to Germany.
Mr Schäuble’s intervention helped to force the issue back on the agenda — and gave Mr de Maizière backing to continue arguing for it, notably in a Bundestag speech on Wednesday, when the interior minister said: “We cannot double or triple our high refugee numbers through family reunion.”
In a sign of the pressure Ms Merkel faces, officials confirmed this week that on October 21 Mr de Maizière had — without telling the chancellor — reimposed the so-called “Dublin rules” for Syrians. The EU regulations allow a country, such as Germany, to return refugees to the member state in which they first arrived in the union. The suspension of these rules was the key technical change Ms Merkel made with her “refugees welcome” announcement this summer.
Ms Merkel’s power is being undermined by the challenges to her refugee policy. Still, few CDU/CSU sceptics seem prepared to seriously question her leadership, focusing instead on pushing her towards a harder line.
She and Mr Schäuble worked closely as Berlin led Europe’s response to the Greek crisis. But a rift emerged over the country’s most recent €86bn bailout, with Mr Schäuble taking a harder line and, some believed, even agitating for a Grexit.
If Ms Merkel were forced out, Mr Schäuble’s allies see him as a likely successor: he is Germany’s second most powerful leader and an increasingly critical voice on refugee policy.
Mr Schäuble has repeatedly sworn his loyalty to Ms Merkel. But MPs say he cannot forget that he was groomed for the top job for years by former chancellor Helmut Kohl only to find himself embroiled in 2000 in a party financing scandal. That opened the way for the previously little-known Ms Merkel to take over the CDU party and, later, the chancellery.
Reckless not Careless
Merkel’s policies are not careless, they are downright reckless.
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