segunda-feira, 4 de setembro de 2017

Merkel: ‘Turkey should not become an EU member’


Merkel: ‘Turkey should not become an EU member’

German chancellor makes bold pledge and judged overall victor in TV debate

8 HOURS AGO by: Stefan Wagstyl and Guy Chazan in Berlin

Angela Merkel on Sunday unexpectedly promised to try to end Turkey’s EU accession talks in a live televised German election debate, amid escalating tensions between Berlin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

The German chancellor was seemingly bounced into making this unusually bold pledge by Martin Schulz, her social democrat challenger, who was the first to say he would break off the talks if he won the parliamentary poll on September 24. 

The exchanges came with 12 German citizens now under arrest in Turkey in a crackdown by Mr Erdogan on regime critics and journalists that is widely seen in the EU as politically motivated and anti-democratic. 

“The fact is clear that Turkey should not become an EU member,” said Ms Merkel, in an unprecedentedly clear rejection of Ankara’s accession hopes. She pledged to talk to EU partners about “a joint position . . . so that we can end these accession talks”. 

The exchange over Turkey was the high point of a wide-ranging debate in which Mr Schulz attacked Ms Merkel with surprising force over Turkey and also over refugee policy. 

But, while viewers were impressed with his aggression, they judged Ms Merkel the overall winner of the encounter. Some 55 per cent of those polled for ARD television found the chancellor convincing against 35 per cent for Mr Schulz. 

If the polls are correct, Mr Schulz appears to have failed to capitalise on the campaign’s only television debate involving Ms Merkel or to revive his flagging chances of defeating the chancellor as she aims for a fourth term. 

 “Martin Schulz performed well,” said Frank Brettschneider, communications professor at Hohenheim University. “But he could not upset Angela Merkel and put her decisively under pressure.” 

However, on Turkey at least, he forced her to harden her position on live television — an unusual development for a cautious chancellor who normally avoids changing policy on the hoof.

The moment was all the more dramatic because by being the first to pledge ending accession talks, Mr Schulz broke with an SPD tradition in which the party has long been more positive about Ankara’s EU bid than Ms Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats. 

Ms Merkel balanced her newfound hard line over accession with promises to maintain dialogue with Turkey, not least over the 12 detained Germans. She said: “I do not intend to break off diplomatic relations with Turkey.” 

Brussels, which has already frozen Turkey's entry negotiations, is now likely to consider further action. 

Mr Schulz, for whom the debate was a rare chance to confront Ms Merkel directly, also attacked the chancellor over her decision in the summer of 2015 to keep open Germany’s borders for asylum seekers. 
He accused her of having failed to consult EU partners properly before taking action in a crisis which has led to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers coming into Germany and strained relations with European partners. 

Focusing on a recent statement from the chancellor when she said she would do the same again as she did two years ago, Mr Schulz said with surprising force: “Merkel said she would do the same as in 2015: I would not agree at all . . . We need a European solution to the problem, and we lost this [with Merkel’s approach].” 

Ms Merkel responded by saying that she had implemented the first article of the German constitution which upholds human rights.

“There are moments in the life of a chancellor where you have to make a decision,” she said. But she admitted that “not everybody can come to us . . . we learnt this in the last few years”. 


But both leaders agreed to promise action on one of the most sensitive political issues, delays in the deportation of failed asylum seekers.

They were also united on backing legal changes to permit class-action suits for owners of diesel cars affected by the emissions scandal, and on cracking down on radical Islamic preachers. 

Many Germans complained that, Turkey aside, there was too little to distinguish the two candidates.

“More a duet than a duel,” said Rainald Becker, an ARD television commentator. Bärbel Szymanski, who watched the debate in Berlin at one of many public viewings of the broadcast, said: “Neither won because they were so similar.” 

Ms Merkel’s Democratic Social Union and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union lead the SPD by 38 per cent to 24 per cent, according to the latest opinion polls by the Emnid agency. 

The numbers have changed little since the late spring, when a surge of support that Mr Schulz secured when he took over the SPD in January, fizzled out.


The chancellor has deliberately taken a low-key approach, reminding voters of Germany’s economic success and her role as a stable anchor in an unstable international environment.

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