An Interview with Seehofer: ‘We Want a Solution to a Immigration Problem’

September 16, 2016

The discuss has been distracted for some-more than a year now. Ever given German Chancellor Angela Merkel non-stop adult a country’s borders to refugees in early Sep of 2015, Horst Seehofer has been regulating each event during his ordering to voice his disagreement. As control of a Christian Social Union (CSU) party, he is not someone who can simply be shrugged off. The CSU is a Bavarian sister celebration to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The twin parties, that collectively are famous simply as a “union,” have a prolonged tradition of campaigning together forward of ubiquitous elections and of divvying adult cupboard posts should a center-right finish adult in government, which, for a final 12 years, it has. The CSU has no chapters in any other state while a CDU has no state section in Bavaria.

As a difference has widened, Seehofer has begun pursuit that prolonged partnership into question, even lifting a probability that his celebration competence discuss on a possess forward of subsequent year’s parliamentary elections and put adult a CSU chancellor candidate. To equivocate that eventuality, he is perfectionist that Merkel take transparent stairs toward reversing her immigration policies and adopting a roof on a series of refugees Germany is peaceful to take in, a step Merkel has refused to take, citing power inconsistencies with a German constitution. Last week, a CSU expelled a paper, called “Germany Must Remain Germany,” surveying stairs it would like to see taken, including a abolishment of twin citizenship and a welfare for migrants from a “Christian-Western culture.” It is final such as these that have led some to review a CSU with a worried populist celebration Alternative for Germany (AfD), that has gained poignant amounts of support in new months in Germany.

DER SPIEGEL spoke with Seehofer about his attribute with a chancellor, his prophesy for a country’s immigration process and accusations of populism that have been leveled opposite him.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Seehofer, when a father spends an whole year vilifying his mother in public, should he not during some indicate accumulate a bravery to put an finish to a relationship?

Seehofer: Every married confederate has disputes from time to time, and in each good marriage, an try is done to overcome a dispute. That is what we are now perplexing to do.

SPIEGEL: The power and abrasiveness of your critique of Angela Merkel is though precedent. When are we going to finally indeed do something, like lift a CSU out of a sovereign government? Doing so wouldn’t even trigger a domestic crisis, given a CDU and a center-left Social Democrats (SPD) would still have a parliamentary infancy though a CSU.

Seehofer: Leaving a supervision would be formidable for both a CSU and a CDU. That’s given we aren’t giving adult and are stability to hunt for a future-oriented solution. Angela Merkel and a CDU have in a meantime adopted several of a demands. What we now need is a complement of rules, a kind of guarantee, for drastically tying a liquid of refugees. The past can't be authorised to repeat itself.

SPIEGEL: Angela Merkel still hasn’t perceived an invitation from we to attend a CSU celebration convention. And we have pronounced you’re not certain we will attend a CDU celebration convention. Such mutual appearances have decades of tradition in Germany. Don’t we consider your contention has sunk to a stadium level?

Seehofer: Our politics are directed by logic. If Angela Merkel was to seem during a CSU gathering and we was to revisit a CDU, notwithstanding a fact that we are miles detached on a essential coordination of a policies, we know full good a repairs that would do to a union. The expectancy is that celebration leaders solve problems. That’s given estimable differences contingency initial be privileged up. we can’t nonetheless tell we now if we will be successful. But given final weekend, we am utterly a bit some-more assured that we will be.

SPIEGEL: You have threatened to record a authorised censure opposite a sovereign supervision and we invited Angela Merkel’s domestic counter Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to a assembly of CSU leaders. Given such provocations, can one still pronounce of “sister parties” and of a “union”?

Seehofer: Yes, of course. We are sisters and we are a union. The final year has been a formidable duration for a CDU and a CSU, a many formidable duration that we myself have actively experienced. We have seen choosing formula that can make nothing of us happy. In Baden-Württemberg, a CDU is behind a Green Party and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it is behind a Alternative for Germany (AfD). But we are now looking forward to a future.

SPIEGEL: Your celebration can boast and bluster all it wants, though we will eventually have to find common belligerent with a CDU so as not to do too most repairs to a CSU.

Seehofer: No one has to tell me that unchanging conflict, and we stress unchanging conflict, is damaging. But it is also loyal that policies will have to change if we wish to win behind trust.

SPIEGEL: There is something else that your celebration has to worry about: If a CDU was to settle a section in Bavaria during some point, it would be a finish of a CSU’s comprehensive infancy in a state. Former CDU ubiquitous secretary Ruprecht Polenz recently mentioned a possibility.

Seehofer: There are many brainy people from a past, though we’re not quite tender with such talk. Our hit people are in Berlin, a chancellor initial and foremost.

SPIEGEL: We have examined dozens of interviews that we have given in new months. You pronounce a lot about interloper policy, though one thing is constantly left ambiguous, maybe intentionally. What petrify stairs does Angela Merkel have to take before we will say: “Okay, now we’ll behind off?”

Seehofer: We wish a resolution to a immigration problem. To do that, we initial need a ceiling. We don’t wish total immigration like we saw final year and that’s given we need contracting measures as a guarantee. When announcements are done that we are combatting a base causes of flight, afterwards they contingency be total with petrify measures. When it is pronounced that those who don’t have a right to haven will be sent back, afterwards we together with a sovereign supervision contingency order a detailed, contracting repatriation program. We wish a transparent complement of manners that clearly and credibly reduces immigration to a reasonable level.

SPIEGEL: So we are adhering to your direct for a tough roof of 200,000 immigrants per year notwithstanding a power inconsistencies with a guaranteed elemental right to asylum?

Seehofer: Yes. We wish a process that safeguards this ceiling. We also, by a way, already altered a structure to make this probable 23 years ago. With a support of all parties. Our structure does not need us to take everybody who appears during a borders and final asylum. And when someone comes from a protected nation of origin, we can immediately repatriate them. The roof will work and it is unchanging with a constitution.

SPIEGEL: The chancellor and several other CDU politicians have regularly insisted that they will not accept a ceiling. If a capitulation of such a roof is a exigency for an agreement, afterwards there won’t be any agreement.

Seehofer: We’ll see. We will not behind divided from a 200,000 ceiling. It’s about a credibility, plain and simple.

SPIEGEL: Given that anything seems probable during this point, is a conditions fathomable whereby a CDU enters a discuss with Merkel as a claimant for chancellor and a CSU says: We won’t support her?

Seehofer: We as a celebration will make crew decisions in a initial entertain of 2017. German story is full of critical mistakes regarding to beforehand crew decisions.

SPIEGEL: Last weekend, CSU leaders presented a paper containing a party’s interloper process final and it is full of peculiar sentences. Such as this one: “We are against to a worldly nation being altered by immigration or interloper flows.” How worldly can a nation be if it doesn’t wish to be altered by immigration?

Seehofer: The paper’s pretension is: “Germany Must Remain Germany.” The chancellor has used roughly a accurate same formulation. When she says it, it’s deliberate magnanimous and destiny oriented. When we contend it, it’s seen as conservative and backwards.

SPIEGEL: Merkel never pronounced that immigration can't be authorised to change a country.

Seehofer: Look, Bavaria is a dynamic, worldly state. Those who don’t adjust tumble behind. But we need belligerent rules. In each bureaucratic discuss we give before state parliament, we say: Bavaria will sojourn Bavaria. That’s not a contradiction.

SPIEGEL: There are other argumentative sentences in your paper. “In a future, immigrants from a Christian-Western enlightenment contingency be given priority.” Do we intend to name immigrants formed on their religion?

Seehofer: Nonsense. For people who contingency fear for their lives given of their sacrament or domestic convictions, a insurance supposing by Article 16a of a German constitution, a right to asylum, applies. Nobody is doubt that. Irrespective of that, there is immigration that contingency be regulated, to move learned crew to Germany, for example. We have to settle criteria for that. Their connection with a Christian-Western enlightenment should be one of them. Such people are a easiest to integrate.

SPIEGEL: You don’t wish any mechanism specialists from India in Bavaria?

Seehofer: We contend “priority.” That doesn’t bar a Chinese clamp boss of a Bavarian university, as we’ve had before. But even if we sojourn flexible, we need belligerent rules. That is what we are perplexing to demonstrate with this sentence.

SPIEGEL: The paper is full of sentences that miss clarity.

Seehofer: Oh my God, each Saturday we review sentences in SPIEGEL that miss clarity.

SPIEGEL: We usually consternation either a ambiguity is intentional. Whether we maybe consciously intend to send messages to a far-right spectrum for that we have a opposite reason in an speak with us.

Seehofer: Our meditative isn’t scarcely that serpentine. Our paper is being interpreted in all kinds of ways that aren’t categorically stated.

SPIEGEL: We usually wish to find out how certain things were meant.

Seehofer: we know full good what is being pronounced about us in this one block kilometer of a Berlin supervision entertain and that fake trails are being laid. We are always presented as a immorality Bavarians who usually wish to chuck a wrench in a system. When we contend how we see things, we are educated to adopt a some-more assuage tone. It’s always a same game. And it’s always a same people.

SPIEGEL: In a Bundestag recently, a chancellor called for a use of some-more assuage language. Do we consider she was articulate about you?

Seehofer: we wondered who she was articulate about. One day later, we spoke with (SPD head) Sigmar Gabriel and he was wondering a same thing. There are good domestic formulations that can request to everybody and to nobody. we wouldn’t know how we could be some-more indifferent in my formulations than we already am.

SPIEGEL: Another doubt about your paper: In rejecting twin citizenship, a paper says that it is unfit to “serve twin masters.” We always suspicion that it wasn’t adults who served their state, though a other approach around.

Seehofer: You aren’t seeking given we are against to twin citizenship. Instead, we are subterfuge over locution. The judgment is loyal and totally okay. we am allergic to this paternalism and censorship.

SPIEGEL: In a paper, it says that a structure relates in Germany and not Sharia law. Why do we insist on emphasizing something that goes though saying?

Seehofer: Unfortunately, that doesn’t go though saying. You should control an speak with confidence policymakers about together probity systems in newcomer communities.

SPIEGEL: The judgment suggests that there is now a onslaught underway as to either a structure or Sharia applies. You are presenting it as a incomparable problem than it unequivocally is.

Seehofer: The usually thing left is for we to ask: “When was a final time we encountered somebody wearing a burqa and does that transparent a discuss we are conducting?”

SPIEGEL: We mostly confront women wearing burqas in a costly selling streets of Munich.

Seehofer: It’s good if we don’t consider there are any problems. The people see things differently and they have a transparent position on burqas. As a celebration of a people, we make it transparent that we take people’s concerns seriously. That is a job. It’s a best approach to fight extremism from both a right and a left.

SPIEGEL: Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of perfume has indicted we of doing a work of a worried populists.

Seehofer: we don’t know Mr. Woelki on that point. But we would be happy to pronounce with him about this misunderstanding.

SPIEGEL: The worried populist AfD has 3 categorical enemies: Angela Merkel, immigrants and a open broadcasting system. Ever given we went after open broadcasters ARD and ZDF and demanded their consolidation, one has a sense that a AfD’s enemies are a same as a CSU’s enemies.

Seehofer: First of all, Angela Merkel and a CDU are not a domestic adversaries. The CDU and a CSU are sister parties. When it comes to ARD and ZDF, we am meddlesome in a doubt as to how they can be some-more fit in a future. They are, after all, financed by contributions from German citizens. That is totally opposite than a “lying press” accusations done by a AfD.

SPIEGEL: You have mostly complained about a news coverage of a open broadcasters. And now we wish to connect them.

Seehofer: The concentration here is on media policy. You during SPIEGEL also pronounce about how we should adjust to a changing media world. we am on a ZDF executive board. There are innumerable structures during this broadcaster that remind one of a supervision agency. we wish to pronounce about how we can urge programming while during a same time obscure contributions.

SPIEGEL: You are constantly emphasizing how discontented we are with politicians in Berlin. Would we be happy if Angela Merkel was to mangle Helmut Kohl’s record of 16 years as German chancellor?

Seehofer: we reason Angela Merkel in high regard. But we won’t get an answer from me to that question.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Seehofer, appreciate we for this interview.

The essay we are reading creatively seemed in German in emanate 38/2016 (September 17th, 2016) of DER SPIEGEL.

Click on a links next for some-more information about DER SPIEGEL’s history, how to allow or squeeze a latest emanate of a German-language book in imitation or digital form or how to obtain rights to reprint SPIEGEL articles.
Frequently Asked Questions: Everything You Need to Know about DER SPIEGEL
Six Decades of Quality Journalism: The History of DER SPIEGEL
A New Home in HafenCity: SPIEGEL’s New Hamburg HQ
Reprints: How To License SPIEGEL Articles