http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/world/europe/angela-merkel-germany.html 2016-09-06 00:01:52 Merkel Feels Political Pressure in Germany as Europe Is in Flux Her open door for refugees has led to a strong electoral challenge from the far right at home and is complicating her efforts to forge a response to Britain’s decision to leave the E.U. === BERLIN — A year after Chancellor Ms. Merkel, chancellor since fall 2005 and Europe’s longest serving leader, has found herself on the defensive in a round of interviews on both the anniversary of the refugee influx and the effective start of campaigning for next year’s national elections. “ With everything in flux in Europe after the stunning British vote to exit the Her approval rating in a widely regarded monthly If national elections were held now, her conservative bloc would get 33 percent of the vote, according to a An early indication of the political troubles ahead could arrive on Sunday, when the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has risen largely on popular fears of the mostly Muslim newcomers, Such an outcome would be a stinging rebuke of her migrant policies. Opinion polls show the two parties neck and neck, hovering “The failed policy of the chancellor is a stroke of luck for our party,” said Alexander Gauland, a leader of Alternative for Germany. “It drives voters towards us.” By opening Germany’s borders to all last year without consulting even one member of Parliament, he added, Ms. Merkel behaved like a dictator. “It is regarded by just about every European leader as an act of madness,” he said. In tacit acknowledgment of critics who say she consulted nobody on the refugee move, Ms. Merkel has embarked on a listening tour of Europe to try to repair relations. In Tallinn, the Estonian prime minister effusively thanked her for her leadership. But it was plain in Warsaw, where she met the four Central European leaders who have flatly refused to take in refugees, that she was not among friends. A host of other demands — from Italy and France for looser purse strings, from Scandinavian and Dutch leaders to beware of fading support for Europe in their countries — are tugging at Ms. Merkel as she and President François Hollande of France consult the Continent’s leaders. They will succeed, at least on paper, in sketching some grand goals for Europe to be announced at a meeting of 27 nations — all of the bloc’s members save Britain — in mid-September. But no one has so far explained how Europe is likely this time, for example, to reduce youth unemployment, a goal voiced for years and reiterated since Britain voted on June 23 to leave the union. Missing goals again is not likely to enhance Europeans’ faith in the bloc. “The chief concern should be for the attractiveness of the union,” said Guntram B. Wolff, director of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels. Security, both internal and external, may be one area of action after terrorist attacks in With Britain, one of Europe’s two nuclear powers, looking for the exit, it is no longer in a position to hamper moves toward what France, Germany and Poland defined this week as “a European civil and military planning and command capacity.” That will also require “development of a strong and competitive defense economy in Europe,” the foreign ministers of the three countries declared. Even Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary and Ms. Merkel’s most implacable opponent on refugees, seems to agree. In Warsaw, he bluntly said that Europe had failed to master economic challenges and that “we have no answers to the migrant crisis.” But, he added, “security takes first place.” “We want to build up a shared European army, common European forces,” he continued. How far any such plans progress is as uncertain as Ms. Merkel’s political future. Analysts and politicians across the board see no serious challenger to Ms. Merkel, who has coyly said only that she will announce “at the given time” whether she will seek a fourth term next year. Jacqueline Boysen wrote a 2001 biography of Ms. Merkel, whom she got to know in the 1990s in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the chancellor has her parliamentary constituency. She doubted that Ms. Merkel would leave her giant refugee task half-finished, or her party in the lurch, by declining to run. “It would be unlike her to leave the party in a mess,” said Ms. Boysen, now a journalist in Berlin. “She is very much aware of duty.” She also emphasized that Ms. Merkel, a trained physicist who entered politics only as Germany unified in 1990, had constantly been underestimated. “She was not taken seriously,” Ms. Boysen recalled in an interview. “The subtext was always, ‘She can’t do it.’ ” In defense of her decision last year, Ms. Merkel trumpets her success in forging a European Union pact with Turkey to stanch the flow of refugees into the Balkans. But Turkey has proved a difficult partner, purging thousands of judges, teachers, journalists and human rights campaigners after Still, in an interview with ARD this week, Ms. Merkel could not resist a little smile as she noted that NATO began a mission to save refugees in the Aegean in just five days in the spring, and that the pact with Turkey was negotiated within months. “Many people said, ‘We can’t do this,’ and then it got done,” she said.