19/09/2015
Today, the refugee crisis looks to many like onrushing chaos, writes
Die Welt, representing a policy failure in the face of major challenges.
And although the paper ventures that the same feeling was also visible in the euro debt crisis, the Chancellor, it says, has the opportunity to consolidate her sometimes apparently contradictory appearances and statements, by resolutely tackling the consequences of the crisis.
This is by no means a foregone conclusion, it adds, but it recalls the vigour with which Germany dealt with its own internal refugee crisis in 1945, suggesting that a repeat performance is within the range of possibility. Addressing the refugee crisis could actually be the formative chapter of her Merkel's chancellorship.
While Croatia buckles under the
fresh surge, this might seem a very distant possibility, but
Die Welt also argues that not very many in 1990 expected Germany to recover and escape from the economic burdens and the political and psychological aftermath of the division of the country.
Despite the hyperventilation from the likes of the
Express, retailing that claims of 35 million migrants are on the march, measured against the reconstruction of Germany, the current crisis is of far less consequence than the upheavals of 25 years ago.
In effect,
Die Welt is saying that the strength and discipline of the Germans should not be under-estimated, and it is capable of applying "considerable weight" to the problem.
Angela Merkel is setting the pace, with some of her allies, using the crisis to develop Europe on "cosmopolitan, forward-facing principles", the pursuit of which seems to have a majority in favour, who share the same opinion as the Chancellor.
This is not the Weimar Republic, says
Die Welt, where Germany was very much alone were in a period of upheaval. And, in a re-assertion of national pride, Germany is increasingly seen in the positive sense. To be German is once more a good thing.
And if that were just the sentiment of one publication, one might dismiss it, but we're seeing something similar from
Zeit Online. It says that "our country is surprising even itself".
Even in Berlin, the Government has officially registered a positive image that Germany, in the face of the unexpected, has practiced a hundred thousand times acts of hospitality. Both the domestic and foreign press surprise us with the discovery that we are a hospitable people. Obviously, nobody foresaw this.
Another thing that hasn't been foreseen is that there may be movement
in Turkey, whence there is the glimmer of a possibility that safe havens can be created, and Syrian refugees can be induced to stay where they are.
With the further possibility of
concerted action between Russia and the US (despite continued tensions in Ukraine), and active Russian intervention in Syria itself, the situation on the ground may also be changing.
Certainly, something has to give as
Handelsblatt reports the obvious â that the migrants cannot be contained by fences alone.
It tells us that a new route is being exploited, as migrants take the sea route from Turkey via the Black Sea to Romania and by land, skimming the border of Ukraine, by-passing Hungary, to Slovakia and then the Czech Republic and Germany.
Meanwhile, the
Berliner Zeitung simply says that the Federal Republic and Europe will have to adapt to the fact that at ever shorter intervals, increasing amounts of refugees will be trying to reach the safe haven of Europe.
And that is giving the politicians of Europe something to think about. The question is whether they can come up with answers, or whether Germany's leadership will be enough. One wonders whether even the best of leadership will be enough.
