{"id":245806,"date":"2016-09-05T11:46:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T11:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=245806"},"modified":"2016-09-05T11:46:36","modified_gmt":"2016-09-05T11:46:36","slug":"merkel-refugee-policy-blamed-for-cdu-german-regional-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=245806","title":{"rendered":"Merkel refugee policy blamed for CDU German regional defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">German Chancellor Angela Merkel&#8217;s allies have urged her to change course on refugees after her governing CDU party was beaten in a regional election by an anti-immigrant party.<\/p>\n<p>The right-wing AfD party, only formed three years ago, came second in the chancellor&#8217;s home state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, polling 21%.<\/p>\n<p>One senior CDU figure blamed the mass influx of refugees without documents.<\/p>\n<p>Some 1.1 million refugees and migrants entered Germany in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Many of them arrived after the government decided to loosen border controls just over a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>The AfD leader in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Leif-Erik Holm, suggested that &#8220;perhaps this is the beginning of the end of Angela Merkel&#8217;s chancellorship&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>AfD (Alternative fuer Deutschland) now has delegates in nine of Germany&#8217;s 18 states.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/E080\/production\/_91027475_035101485-1.jpg\" alt=\"AfD supporters were overjoyed by the party's success on Sunday\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a debacle for Angela Merkel and her refugee policy,&#8221; said Edmund Stoiber, honorary chairman of the Bavarian-based CSU, the sister party of the CDU.<\/p>\n<p>It was not enough to criticise the AfD&#8217;s voters, he argued &#8211; the CDU had to understand why people were losing faith in its policies.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Stoiber called for a limit on the number of people entering Germany.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body__crosshead\"><strong>How the parties polled:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">SPD (centre-left Social Democrats): 30.6%<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">AfD: 20.8%<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">CDU: 19%, its worst-ever showing in the state<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The CDU is in coalition nationally with the SPD, and also regionally in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, although that may now change.<\/p>\n<p>Wolfgang Bosbach of the CDU said the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants without documents had &#8220;put the wind in AfD&#8217;s sails&#8221;. CSU Secretary General Andreas Scheuer spelt out that what was now needed was a cap on refugee numbers and better integration and repatriation of failed asylum seekers.<\/p>\n<p>Angela Merkel visited the north-eastern state twice in recent days as opinion polls indicated her party was heading for its worst ever performance there.<\/p>\n<p>She gave a defiant interview on immigration, insisting that change was not a bad thing and that &#8220;Germany will remain Germany, with everything that is dear to us&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Although the chancellor&#8217;s popularity has fallen nationally, she still has 45% approval ratings and has yet to decide if she wants to run for a fourth term in September 2017 elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel&#8217;s allies have urged her to change course on refugees after her governing CDU party was beaten in a regional election by an anti-immigrant party. The right-wing AfD party, only formed three years ago, came second in the chancellor&#8217;s home state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, polling 21%. One senior CDU figure blamed the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":245811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/245811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}