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| The mood in Germany is rapidly shifting, and Chancellor Merkel is under fire. |
The most unusual tribunal in the republic meets around 25 times per year, usually on Tuesdays in the gray-panelled conference room on the third floor of the Reichstag where conservative parliamentarians often meet. At the front sits the defendant, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her accusers sit at the long rows of tables before her, the three or four dozen back benchers who are increasingly adopting the tone of a public prosecutor when addressing Merkel's refugee policies.
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But then came New Year's Eve in Cologne, and since then everything has changed -- both in Merkel's party and across the country. The occasionally shrill debates in talk shows, on the Internet and on the streets have become even shriller. Among politicians in Berlin, calls for something to be done have grown both in number and volume. And within the population, where attitudes toward Merkel's policies have for months wavered between sympathy and skepticism, concerns are growing: Will the effort to integrate more than a million refugees overwhelm German society? Can the government still guarantee the safety of its citizens? Is the state failing?
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But Merkel has failed to promptly impose order on the streams of refugees flowing into the country. Now, even her supporters are concerned that her plan for a European solution to the problem could fail. Former allies, such as the government of Sweden, have reintroduced tight border controls. Conservative German Constitutional Court justices such as Udo Di Fabio and Hans-Jürgen Papier have accused Merkel of making grave mistakes. And even a center-left paper like the New York Times, which for much of 2015 couldn't praise Merkel's refugee policies enough, recently published a column describing her course as a "high-minded folly." Read the whole article » | By SPIEGEL Staff | Tuesday, January 19, 2016
