CDU refugee policy: Was it right?

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My last workshop conversation took a rather unfavorable course.

"Do not be angry with me," said the man in the blue jumpsuit when asked what it would cost to find this leak so that after every downpour, the underfoot right rear was under water. He looked at the car, then at me, then at the car again, and then he said that in my place he would not put any money in there, but drive on until the MOT has run out, and then it would be over because: " Do not be angry with me, but such cars are going to Africa. "

The main actors are missing

It can not be that kind of workshop talk that the new CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is currently leading with her party, because obviously the Union is not concerned with anyone going to Africa, but, on the contrary, with as much as possible no one from there (or anywhere else) comes to us. Or about clearing up the refugee policy of its predecessor Angela Merkel, yes what actually:? approve? Let's see! Anyway, it's about "migration, security and integration", Kramp-Karrenbauer wants to "discuss the topic in all its breadth".

That sounds more like the second known form of the genre "Werkstattgespräch", which usually takes place at the theater. A director sits on stage and explains, asked by a diligent cultural journalist, why in his production everything had to be very different from all the other productions before, for which the actors who are also present on the stage throw meaningful glances. The interested audience thus learns what volition the possibly incomprehensible events on the stage might have followed.

It can not be such a workshop talk, the Kramp-Karrenbauer leads with its party, because it lacks the main characters of the major refugee conflict in the EU in 2015 and the following: Horst Seehofer, as CSU leader and Bavarian Prime Minister of a "rule of Is wrong "and not only the coalition, but also the faction community with the CDU because of the refugee policy several times almost broke, is not there. And especially Angela Merkel is missing. She is now exclusively Federal Chancellor, she has lost nothing at pure party events.

The big void of the Union

So, it's always good, you try to look ahead and talk in discussion circles about what you could do better in the future. First results have already been achieved: one wants to "consistently decide and act" with a "reasonable mixture of humanity and toughness" - this is what participants say. This gives courage in a debate with many different positions and opinions, the chairman is pleased.

In view of these platitudes, one can not blame the Chancellor for not spending Monday in a chair circle in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus. And yet their absence reveals the great void that the CDU has not been able to fill for years. Of course, it makes sense to talk again and again in the "workshop talk" about how the EU's external borders can be protected and Schengen preserved, how asylum procedures can be accelerated and how skilled workers are to be organized. And what a sensible integration policy could look like.

But one question remains open, it still divides the Union, and it is connected with Merkel like no other: Was it right in late summer 2015 to keep the borders open and to let many thousands of refugees come to Germany?

The then Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has just stated in his book "Governing" that this is not a legally unequivocal question to be answered: You could have closed the borders, but you did not have to. It was a political decision. Was she right? Then the CDU finds no answer under Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

A little further to the right, but not too much

How could she? If the Union came out of the workshop announcing that it had all been a terrible mistake, one should have reacted better then with less humanity and above all with heaviness, with batons also against women and children in order to prevent them from crossing the border, under condolence from miserable camps on the Austrian-German border and a backlog of refugees to completely overstrained Greece - what would be the result? Would not the CDU have long since driven out Angela Merkel not only from the party chairmanship but also from the Chancellery? And how is such a partitioning actually compatible with the Christian "C" in the party name?

Or to put it another way: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer confronted the press and declared that everything had been discussed again, and of course, in the face of misery, one had to react above all humanly; after all, one was a Christian party and Germany a rich country Incidentally, it has also been largely done - why exactly would Angela Merkel actually no longer party leader?

There is no satisfactory, unanimous answer to this question for the party, even under Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. And so the party chairman talks in such a way that as many as possible have the impression that she is on her side: a little further to the right than Merkel, but please not too much. And then, at some point, it's good, we finally talked extensively.

In fact, after the great reconciliation rally, the only hope for the party is that it will never happen again that the Greeks and the Italians will keep their borders so dense that no one in the Chancellery will ever again decide to force people to do so to drive for a better life or to let her in, with all the problems and risks.

Just as well you can wish it never rains again.