Angela Merkel said she would not link refugee sharing to the EU budget as she started off her pre-election campaign to secure her fourth term as German Chancellor. Her remarks were mostly targeted at the Central European member states – Hungary, Poland and the Czech and Slovak Republics – who are not willing to accept refugees and are blocking their redistribution via mandatory EU quotas, thus leaving Italy and Greece to bear the burden of the migration crisis.
Angela Merkel’s major opponent in the election – Martin Schultz – had previously called on cuts in EU funding for the migrant quota rebels. Angela Merkel, however, thinks that “to pay ransom, that won’t work in this context” and made it clear that she wanted to carry on negotiations instead of imposing sanctions. She, however, admitted that the disagreement about the redistribution and the unwillingness to accept refugees were regrettable.
Mrs. Merkel is also against the idea put forward by the leader of the conservative CSU party in Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, that Germany should set an upper limit to cap the number of refugees. However, she also said that the 2015 scenario when 890,000 refugees came to the country should not happen again. In her opening speech during the opening of the so-called “walkable campaigning program” in Berlin last week, Angel Merkel insisted that Germany’s strength lay in its diversity. She thanked the audience for helping to cope with the influx of migrants.
In March 2014, Merkel became the longest-serving incumbent EU head of government and currently serves as the senior G7 leader. Federal elections will be held in Germany on 24 September to elect the 19th Bundestag. The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), led by Angela Merkel, has maintained a double-digit lead over the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in opinion polling since the 2013 election, except from a period in early 2017 following the selection of Martin Schulz as SPD leader.
