Angela Merkel is besieged. The Bavarian sister party of the German chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union wants tougher frontier controls. The anti-migrant pose struck by Horst Seehofer, the Christian Social Union interior minister in Ms Merkel’s coalition, is cheered by populists from Warsaw to Rome, via Vienna and Budapest. Have any of them thought, some of us wonder, what a Germany taking a nationalist turn might actually look like?
Mr Seehofer’s motives are transparent. The CSU suffered a mauling at the hands of the unashamedly xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 national election. Facing a state poll in October, the party now wants to outflank AfD. EU leaders will discuss a European-wide migration scheme later this month. If he is not happy, Mr Seehofer is threatening unilateral controls.
Many Germans — a majority, the latest poll suggests — remain suspicious of the chancellor’s open borders strategy. Among neighbours, the Visegrad Four — Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary — are fierce critics. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, scorn efforts to disperse asylum seekers across the Union.