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ANGELA MERKEL

Top Merkel ally calls for asylum cap

German Chancellor Angela Merkel came under fire on Friday for her welcoming refugee policy from her powerful Bavarian coalition ally, who demanded she cap arrivals "in the national interest".

Top Merkel ally calls for asylum cap
German chancellor Angela Merkel with Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer on Friday. Photo:
Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer berated Merkel's open-door policy as the chancellor stood on stage beside him at a Munich congress attended by some 1,000 members of his conservative CSU party.
 
“We want control and order, but we also want a limit — in the national interest,” said Seehofer, whose state bordering Austria has become Germany's main gateway for people fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
 
“I can only tell you that we will be talking about this again, and I hope that we will come to an understanding,” Seehofer said before his party faithful, as a visibly uncomfortable Merkel stood beside him, staring at the floor.
   
For Merkel, Germany's refugee influx, predicted to reach one million people this year, has become the biggest challenge of her chancellorship as she marks 10 years in office this weekend.
 
Her decision to welcome Syrian refugees has won her plaudits but also sparked a backlash, with some senior ministers openly questioning the approach and her usually stellar poll ratings slipping several points.
 
In her speech minutes earlier to her CSU sister party, Merkel had again insisted that the top EU economy can and will shelter people in need and that “isolation and inaction are no solution in the 21st century”.
 
She has argued that Germany's constitutional right to asylum knows no numerical upper limit, stressing that to reduce refugee flows Germany must work in concert with its EU and international partners.
 
Key steps would be to combat the root causes of the refugee crisis, by working to end the Syria conflict and fighting the Islamic State group, by securing the EU's external borders and combating human traffickers, she said.
 
“With this approach to reducing migrant numbers — as opposed to a unilaterally-set national ceiling — we will manage to act in everyone's interest,” she told the congress.
 
Under Berlin's proposal, the EU would accept a fixed number of refugees, likely several hundred thousand, a year, who are now in camps in Turkey, which would in turn seal its land and sea borders to the bloc.
   
The EU would also better protect its external borders and distribute the refugee intake among its 28 members under a national quota system, while keeping internal European borders open.
 
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier — both from the centre-left Social Democrats, Merkel's other coalition partner — in a commentary for Spiegel Online Friday supported the proposal.
 
However, so far most EU members have shown little enthusiasm for taking in more refugees, and the position has only hardened in many European capitals in the aftermath of the Paris jihadist attacks.

POLITICS

Sleep, seaside, potato soup: What will Merkel do next?

 After 16 years in charge of Europe's biggest economy, the first thing Angela Merkel wants to do when she retires from politics is take "a little nap". But what about after that?

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes and smiles at a 2018 press conference in Berlin.
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes at a 2018 press conference in Berlin. Aside from plans to take "a little nap" after retiring this week, she hasn't given much away about what she might do next. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP

The veteran chancellor has been tight-lipped about what she will do after handing over the reins to her successor Olaf Scholz on December 8th.

During her four terms in office, 67-year-old Merkel was often described as the most powerful woman in the world — but she hinted recently that she will not miss being in charge.

“I will understand very quickly that all this is now someone else’s responsibility. And I think I’m going to like that situation a lot,” she said during a trip to Washington this summer.

Famous for her stamina and her ability to remain fresh after all-night meetings, Merkel once said she can store sleep like a camel stores water.

But when asked about her retirement in Washington, she replied: “Maybe I’ll try to read something, then my eyes will start to close because I’m tired, so I’ll take a little nap, and then we’ll see where I show up.”

READ ALSO: ‘Eternal’ chancellor: Germany’s Merkel to hand over power
READ ALSO: The Merkel-Raute: How a hand gesture became a brand

‘See what happens’
First elected as an MP in 1990, just after German reunification, Merkel recently suggested she had never had time to stop and reflect on what else she might like to do.

“I have never had a normal working day and… I have naturally stopped asking myself what interests me most outside politics,” she told an audience during a joint interview with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

“As I have reached the age of 67, I don’t have an infinite amount of time left. This means that I want to think carefully about what I want to do in the next phase of my life,” she said.

“Do I want to write, do I want to speak, do I want to go hiking, do I want to stay at home, do I want to see the world? I’ve decided to just do nothing to begin with and see what happens.”

Merkel’s predecessors have not stayed quiet for long. Helmut Schmidt, who left the chancellery in 1982, became co-editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a popular commentator on political life.

Helmut Kohl set up his own consultancy firm and Gerhard Schroeder became a lobbyist, taking a controversial position as chairman of the board of the Russian oil giant Rosneft.

German writer David Safier has imagined a more eccentric future for Merkel, penning a crime novel called Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark  that sees her tempted out of retirement to investigate a mysterious murder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel forms her trademark hand gesture, the so-called “Merkel-Raute” (known in English as the Merkel rhombus, Merkel diamond or Triangle of Power). (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)
 

Planting vegetables
Merkel may wish to spend more time with her husband Joachim Sauer in Hohenwalde, near Templin in the former East Germany where she grew up, and where she has a holiday home that she retreats to when she’s weary.

Among the leisure activities she may undertake there is vegetable, and especially, potato planting, something that she once told Bunte magazine in an interview in 2013 that she enjoyed doing.

She is also known to be a fan of the volcanic island of D’Ischia, especially the remote seaside village of Sant’Angelo.

Merkel was captured on a smartphone video this week browsing the footwear in a Berlin sportswear store, leading to speculation that she may be planning something active.

Or the former scientist could embark on a speaking tour of the countless universities from Seoul to Tel Aviv that have awarded her honorary doctorates.

Merkel is set to receive a monthly pension of around 15,000 euros ($16,900) in her retirement, according to a calculation by the German Taxpayers’ Association.

But she has never been one for lavish spending, living in a fourth-floor apartment in Berlin and often doing her own grocery shopping.

In 2014, she even took Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to her favourite supermarket in Berlin after a bilateral meeting.

So perhaps she will simply spend some quiet nights in sipping her beloved white wine and whipping up the dish she once declared as her favourite, a “really good potato soup”.

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