Merkel vows to enhance German wealth, security in 4th term

Dissent against the Chancellor’s views towards migration has been intense during the campaign trail ahead of the election on September 24.

The influx has slowed dramatically due to the closure of the so-called Balkan route and a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of people fleeing war-ravaged Syria in particular.

Social Democratic Party leader Martin Schulz also vowed to invest more money in education as chancellor.

Neither does a nationalist party that expanded its appeal with rhetoric highly critical of Merkel’s welcoming attitude toward migrants appear poised to produce change at the top.

Merkel lost popular support a year ago over worries about how Germany could absorb an influx of over 1 million migrants.

“If she wants to come in under my leadership with the CDU as junior partner, then we can see”. The Government claims it never put a numerical figure on the number it would accept through the “Dubs scheme” – which was championed by Labour peer Lord Dubs, himself a Jewish refugee to the United Kingdom from Nazi-occupied Europe during WWII.

She said in an interview with public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday that she also wants to improve schools and education, and to push for more electric automobiles.

“The protests at Merkel’s rallies have become so frequent that UK’s Daily Express correctly noted: “[Her] election campaign team are well used to boos during their tour of Germany”.

“We demand the release of Deniz Yücel, Peter Steudtner and Mesale Tolu”, Merkel said in reference to three German citizens (a journalist, a human rights activist and a translator, respectively) imprisoned in Turkey. Some 106,000 asylum seekers arrived in the first seven months of 2017, led by Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, according to German Interior Ministry figures.

29 at a Berlin press conference that she wanted to have better relations with Turkey, but the relationship between Berlin and Ankara was now at “a very complicated phase”.

[R] efugees should be distributed among the European Union member states in solidarity, she said.

She criticized the so-called “Dublin Regulation” on refugees, which requires those seeking asylum to register in the first European Union state they enter.

Earlier, Merkel accused one of the AfD’s top officials, Alexander Gauland, of racism for recent remarks that Aydan Ozoguz, the government’s integration minister, should be “dumped” back in her parent’s homeland, Turkey.

Gauland has backed away from his use of the word “disposed” but otherwise has stood by his remarks.