Chancellor Angela Merkel has launched her re-election battle as a law-and-order candidate, facing down internal critics and a rising far-right challenge with the most conservative party conference address of her career.
In a concession to increasingly vocal conservative critics in her Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the centrist German leader vowed to speed up deportations of failed asylum seekers and appeared to reverse her position in summer that a ban on headscarves was unworkable – and possibly unconstitutional.
“The full veil is not suitable and should be banned wherever possible, it doesn’t belong here,” she said to the largest cheers during her party conference address in Essen.
Acknowledging a world that was “weaker and less stable” at the end of 2016, Dr Merkel urged her party – and voters – to reject populism and defend European values and back her for for a fourth term as German leader.
"I've asked a lot of you because the times ask a lot of us," she told delegates, a nod to the refugee crisis that brought around 900,000 people into Germany last year and tested Dr Merkel's authority like never before.
After 16 years as CDU leader, Dr Merkel acknowledged that next year’s election would be the most difficult since German unification. There was a real possibility of a new, left-wing government while her CDU faces a growing challenge from the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Without mentioning the party by name, Dr Merkel told delegates: “We have to integrate from the right.”
After delivering what CDU conservatives wanted to hear, Dr Merkel shifted back to a more familiar, conciliatory tone. She warned against believing people offering simple answers to complex problems and pointed instead to her record in office: three balanced budgets in a row and a jobless rate half that in 2005.
World ‘off kilter’
People felt the “world is off kilter”, she acknowledged, but said there was no way to turn the clock back on globalisation. Instead, she said, Germany needed to put its best foot forward, securing prosperity by mastering the digital revolution and standing firm for its own values and inner strength.
“Our future hangs solely and singularly from our own strength,” she said, “we hold this in our own hand.”
As the failed Italian referendum sparks fears of a renewed euro crisis, Dr Merkel dismissed as “negligent” calls from some quarters for greater flexibility on budgetary rules.
“We know how endangered our currency was three, four years ago and some want to forget that,” she said. “We cannot allow a second euro crisis, we have to stick to the stability and growth pact, I’m convinced of that.”
She had no new message for Britain on Brexit, with no “cherry-picking” of fundamental freedoms – in particular freedom of movement – to secure single market access.
After securing an 11-minute standing ovation, and support of 89.5 per cent of delegates, political analyst Prof Karl-Rudolf Körte suggested Dr Merkel’s conservative tone reflected a new political reality in Germany.
“But it wasn’t a transformation,” he said. “The core Merkel melody was still recognisable.”
