Many will have breathed a sigh of relief when, after six months of haggling, Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party managed to cobble together a ‘grand coalition’ with the discredited and seriously enfeebled Social Democratic Party (SDP). Support for both these centrist parties is at its lowest ever, and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is the de facto opposition. The new government’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer (of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union), last Friday said: “Islam does not belong in Germany”, echoing AfD’s anti-immigrant stance. He followed this up on Sunday by criticising the EU for failing to protect its borders and taking a ‘moralising’ tone towards Eastern Europe and the distribution of migrants.
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