Migration policy of the CDU: "That something like 2015 is not repeated"

A chancellor always has something to do. For example, on Monday afternoon at 2.30 pm, Angela Merkel received a delegation from the Central Gardening Association, abbreviated ZVG, which presented her, as every year, with a valentines flower greeting at the government headquarters.

On the other hand, a Chancellor can largely decide on her own dates, and Valentine's Day is only on Thursday, so she could have received the ZVG delegation even later. Of course, Merkel could have participated instead in the so-called workshop talk of the CDU on the topics of migration, security and integration.

She just did not want to.

And that was in the end also the right decision Merkel - and another auxiliary service for her successor in the office of the CDU chairmen. The idea of ​​Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the party for a day and a half to discuss about what in the CDU has led to disagreements and with the sister party CSU almost broke, considers Merkel wrong. The arguments are exchanged from the point of view of the Chancellor, she found a chair circle in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus superfluous. But, that was probably clear to Merkel: So that Kramp-Karrenbauer and the CDU then at least be able to look ahead, she had to stay away from the matter.

That is the only reason why the new Chairwoman in her closing remarks on late Monday afternoon can say with conviction and with wide applause the sentence: "We have taken a good step forward." The audience includes representatives of the CDU and CSU, including the Bavarian Minister of the Interior Joachim Herrmann - that, of course, is also a sign.

Fill the trenches

The start on Sunday evening was still pretty backward and more theoretical, as a round of scientists discussed the state of German and European asylum and migration policies. But on Monday it was more concrete: Since CDU and CSU politicians from the Bundestag, the European Parliament and Parliament and local representatives worked together with practitioners from the judiciary and enforcement a package of proposals with which the Union wants to achieve, "that does not repeat something like this in 2015 ", as Kramp-Karrenbauer puts it in conclusion.

That's because everyone agrees. Including Merkel.

The fact that the German borders remained open in the late summer of 2015, however, will never forgive the party-internal and certainly the Christian social critics of the Chancellor. This question has not only strengthened the AfD, but has also become a matter of faith in the Union parties. The new head of the CDU has now tried to fill the ditches - and at the same time to emancipate another piece of her sponsor Merkel.

Of course, it is fitting that Paul Ziemiak, meanwhile CDU General Secretary, moderated the summary of the results of the four workshops on the topics of external borders, governance, deportations and integration, which for a long time was one of the particularly vociferous Merkel critics. Integrate, integrate, listen to everyone: That's what Kramp-Karrenbauer has to do after her narrow victory against Friedrich Merz in the race for the party presidency. She has already implemented this with her General Secretary Ziemiak.

Among other things, one wants

• Introduce asylum procedures in transit zones at the external border of the EU,
• The European border police will expand Frontex to a staff of 10,000 men and women by 2020,
• extend federal police powers,
• to further reduce the attractiveness of Germany for refugees by reducing social benefits,
• automatic expulsion for sexual offenses and attacks on police officers,
• only one more instance in asylum procedures,
• a better monitoring of the German borders, if necessary even rejections.

Some things go very far, especially that the word "rejections" appears in the closing paper is amazing. But from the point of view of the new party leader - and that is what she stresses again in her closing remarks - everything should be coordinated with the European partners, national unilateral actions should not exist. And anyway everything will go through the CDU board again, only then will show what is left.

Enthusiastic of the format workshop talk

But Kramp-Karrenbauer also wants the party to discuss disputed matters again. So it was on her "listening tour" still as Secretary General, especially at the regional conferences with their party chair competitors Friedrich Merz and Jens Spahn. Now for the particularly sensitive topic of migration.

And the party leader has another ulterior motive: Your Christian Democrats must not happen, that the subject of CDU trauma, as the SPD fared with the once initiated by her chancellor Gerhard Schröder Hartz reforms.

So much does she seem to occupy that Kramp-Karrenbauer welcomed the guests in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus on Sunday evening, first as "Social Democrats" - a lapse, which she said with reference to the current efforts of the SPD, the unloved Hartz -Reforms.

On Monday, she then thanked the "friends of CDU and CSU" correctly and paused: "Now it has succeeded without a slip of the tongue." But the party leader already knows that things went quite well. Kramp-Karrenbauer and their people in the Adenauer-Haus are so enthusiastic that they want to apply the format of the workshop discussion to other topics as well.