Saturday, April 16, 2016
Maestro A (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
As the first female Chancellor from East Germany, Angela Merkel jokingly refers to herself as “a person of migration background,” having moved from Hamburg (FRG) to Templin (GDR) as an infant, and from East to West (metaphorically speaking), after the fall of the Wall. Merkel has deliberately liberalized FRG asylum, residency and citizenship provisions since 2006, due to her realization that Germany can only meliorate its looming demographic crisis througheffective immigration and integration processes. Having offered a strong response to the refugee crisis, she has not been able to move other EU members to share the “burdens” afflicting poorer receiving states. Due to the Euro-crisis, Merkel has become dominant political actor across the region, raising questions about her ability to circumvent a loss of cohesiveness, solidarity and transparency within the Community per se. This paper addresses her attempts to negotiate between the proverbial Scylla and Charibdis of German national interests and its unflailing commitment to "Europe," on the one hand, and her ability to "upload" coherent asylum and migration rules to the EU level, on the other.
