Merkel faces moment of truth

These are uncomfortable times for Angela Merkel. On the big issues of the day — eurozone reform and migration — there is little room left for Germany’s chancellor to procrastinate and all of her options are politically risky. Support for her “grand coalition”, made up of the Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democrats, fell below 50% in recent opinion polls. If there were a snap election, she could not even be sure of forming a new government.

Merkel’s coalition partners from Bavaria’s CSU are challenging her on migration, threatening to block asylum seekers at Germany’s borders. If she is to survive this political challenge, she will need help from European allies, few of whom are offering much succour ahead of the EU summit later in June. Her insistence on the need for a common European framework for handling asylum seekers and migrants is the most rational and effective response to a crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees from Africa and the Middle East pour across Europe’s borders. But no one should be under the illusion that such a framework would provide a full answer to the challenges of tackling irregular migration and the social stresses of integration, managing migrant flows humanely and meeting future demand for labour.

The effect of migration on European politics has become truly poisonous, even though absolute numbers of asylum seekers were down 44% in 2017 and have stabilised at about 50,000 a month in 2018. Progress towards a common European position on the continuing flows is hampered by central European intransigence on accepting even minimal numbers of refugees.

Across Europe populists have succeeded in conflating the migrant issue with terrorism, crime and Islam’s role in Europe. If recent opinion polls are accurate, this toxic mix will cause another political shock in September, when Sweden’s elections are expected to deliver a breakthrough for the anti-immigrant right. London, June 20