German Chancellor Angela Merkel has presided over her country’s politics for almost fifteen years after winning the 2005 election. Her chancellorship has been dominated by the 2008 financial crisis, the eurozone crisis, Trump’s tariffs and Brexit. Often hailed as the de facto leader of Europe and the world’s most powerful woman, voters portrayed her as a source of stability and prosperity.

But her authority was severely damaged following Europe’s 2015 migrant crisis and the subsequent arrival of one million migrants. Her decision left Germany deeply polarised and triggered the rise of Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Her party, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), has suffered in the polls since. Merkel declared that ‘things can’t go on the way they are’ following disastrous regional election results last year in Hesse and Bavaria for the CDU and its Bavarian-only sister party. The Chancellor stated that she would not seek a fourth election and that she will resign her position in 2021.

Her decision to leave had no impact on the CDU’s performance in this year’s European elections. In Saxony and Brandenburg, the AfD beat Merkel’s party into second place and gained an 11 per cent vote share throughout Germany. This was only 2 per cent less than their vote share during the 2017 federal elections.

Throughout most of those international crises listed above, Merkel became renowned for her pragmatism and decisiveness. But the migrant crisis will tarnish her legacy. Her chancellorship will be remembered as the moment the far-right re-emerged in Germany, thereby shattering the post-war consensus that has defined German politics since 1945.

The recent Thuringia election proves how difficult governing Germany will become in the future. During the 2019 European elections, the AfD came second place to the CDU. But in this month’s state election there, they more than doubled their support and won 23.5 per cent of the vote. This is up from 10.6 per cent in 2014. However, the AfD were still defeated by the Left Party on Sunday.

Even though the populists’ support continues to grow, none of Germany’s mainstream parties intend to govern alongside them. Thuringia’s election has only strengthened the power base of Björn Höcke, the AfD’s leader in the state. He is renowned for questioning Germany’s role in the Holocaust. Following his electoral success, he said: “The people of Thuringia have voted for a Turnaround 2.0.”

Thuringia may only be a small state in Germany, but the far-right’s success here is significant due to Mr. Höcke’s controversial language. The AfD have now made governing the state difficult as the traditional parties refuse to form a coalition with them. The only way they can govern is by forming a stable majority consisting of the Left and conservatives, although this has been ruled out by the CDU.

Merkel was no doubt relieved when the CDU and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) retained power in Saxony and Brandenburg respectively following elections in those two states last September, but the AfD made substantial gains. They gained a 27.8 per cent vote share in Saxony and 23.5 per cent of the vote in Brandenburg. Andreas Kalbitz, the party’s leader in Brandenburg, said the results showed “the AfD is here to stay.”

The rise of radical politics has had an impact on the SDP too. They must decide whether remaining in coalition with the CDU is a worthwhile position as the Greens, AfD and other parties tear apart their vote share. They may even shift further to the left themselves to prevent populist parties from tarnishing their electoral performances.

The Chancellor still has time to transform her party’s position and she has until 2021 to improve the CDU’s fortunes. The problem is that German politics has become so polarised because of the 2015 migrant crisis. Merkel’s legacy will be that Europe’s largest economy has become increasingly difficult to govern.

L'articolo Will the Rise of the AfD Throughout Germany be Merkel’s Legacy? proviene da InsideOver.

Since 2017, the UNHCR estimates that more than 2,700 people have died or gone missing while trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean sea. In 2016, around 362,000 migrants and refugees took the risk of crossing the Mediterranean, and while these numbers have declined in recent years, at least 63,311 people have taken a similar risk so far in 2019.

The fact that large numbers of people from Africa are playing Russian roulette with their own lives is no secret. However, what’s less widely known is that Europe (and NATO) have been indirectly complicit in one of the most shameful features of the current migrant crisis: human trafficking.

What’s most startling about the current wave of people smuggling is that in Libya at least, traffickers have infiltrated coastguards and other public authorities. Not only that, but evidence suggests that certain NGOs have been cooperating with smugglers, who have even benefitted from EU-funded training. And more generally, they’ve been able to exist and operate not just because of the instability created by the 2011 overthrow of Gadaffi, but because of EU policy, which has stubbornly refused to open more European ports and to take a more decisive approach to the crisis.

For example, Avvenire reported last week that Abd al-Rahman Milad, the notorious leader of a trafficking gang, had attended talks in 2017 between Italian intelligence officials and the Libyan coastguard. The meeting was focused on migrant-crossing policy, following a memorandum signed in February 2017 between Italy and the UN-recognised Libyan government.

That al-Rahman Milad was included as a representative of the Libyan coastguard is testament to how far criminal gangs and people smugglers have penetrated Libya’s official structures, with al-Rahman’s Milad’s most heinous offences involving the deliberate “sinking of migrant boats using firearms.” But more importantly, it’s a testament to the vacuum of responsibility that has opened up in Libya and in the context of the migrant crisis, as the EU fails to confront the problem as fully as necessary.

Nicknamed “Bija,” al-Rahman Milad had reportedly asked Italian authorities during the 2017 meeting for funds. It’s not certain whether his request was accepted, but other reports suggest that certain other Libyan people smugglers have received EU finances. Back in February, Politico published leaked documents from the European External Action Service, which reported that some members of the Libyan coastguard trained and funded by the EU had been collaborating with traffickers. This is backed up by other reports, with a 2017 investigative feature in New Internationalist detailing how traffickers had likely benefitted from an EU training program worth millions of euros.

Just as alarmingly, a December 2016 report by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency – Frontex – observed that even NGOs had allegedly been collaborating with smugglers. The report suggested that contact (knowing or not) between smugglers and NGOs was such that individuals rescued by NGO boats were “not willing to co-operate with debriefing experts at all,” while some of them revealed, “that they were warned not to co-operate with Italian law enforcement or Frontex.”

There’s no indication that the situation has significantly changed in recent months, and while migrant crossing figures are down this year, it’s unlikely that smugglers no longer interact with or play an active role in the Libyan coastguard.

For instance, a Human Rights Watch report published this January stated, “The EU is providing support to the Libyan Coast Guard to enable it to intercept migrants and asylum seekers at sea after which they take them back to Libya to arbitrary detention, where they face inhuman and degrading conditions and the risk of torture, sexual violence, extortion, and forced labor.” This kind of description hardly accords with a law-abiding, well-trained and well-organised coastguard.

Of course, this isn’t meant simply to be an indictment of Libya and its inability to reduce human trafficking. For one, the emergence of people smugglers and militias is a direct consequence of the 2011 NATO-led overthrow of the Muammar Gaddafi regime, which rather than setting Libya on the road to stability, mostly created the opportunity for warring factions and militias to drag the country into chaos.

On top of this, the continued existence of human traffickers and their presence within Libyan authorities is also an indictment of European policy. For several years now, Italy has been calling for ports to be opened in France and Spain, yet these requests have been consistently rejected by various EU member states, while numerous Schengen members reintroduced border controls following the onset of the crisis. In other words, there’s a lack of alternative routes through which migrants could reach Europe, and in conjunction with the closure of the Turkey-Greece route in 2016, it means that too much power is concentrated in Libya and its criminal gangs.

Finally, the EU’s 2017 decision to focus Operation Sofia less on rescuing migrants at sea and more on cracking down on people smuggling has ironically helped to perpetuate the very issue it purportedly aims to solve. Because if a greater emphasis had been placed on actually rescuing people at sea and bringing them to European shores, migrants would feel much less of a need to turn to those who would exploit them.

L'articolo Human Traffickers Infiltrate Libya’s Coastguards During Migrant Crisis proviene da InsideOver.