AWhen things get serious, dark clouds gather over the mountains of Cali. It is Thursday afternoon, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is visiting Colombia, but it has long been clear that her focus is elsewhere: the mood among the Greens is threatening to change. Throughout the week, Baerbock had accompanied the debate on the EU’s asylum reform on their trip through Latin America. Now there is a compromise in Europe – and the mood among the Greens is darkening like the sky over Cali.
Baerbock has the program changed for the day, she needs time. She tries with verve to advertise the compromise with video switching in her party and parliamentary group. She sends a letter to the parliamentary group, which the FAZ has received. It’s five pages, she writes that a decision was made in Brussels that was difficult for her as foreign minister, as a Green and personally. She still thinks the compromise is right. “The status quo will improve for many refugees, even if not all of the issues that we had campaigned for are reflected in the agreement.”
She continues: “A no or an abstention by Germany on the reform would have meant more and not less suffering.” One had to weigh up whether one would maintain the status quo with a no or create perspective with a “painful compromise”. “For me, to bear government responsibility means to face such dilemmas,” writes Baerbock. Her guiding principle as Foreign Minister is always how her actions can actually help to improve the situation of as many people as possible, “even if only by a millimeter”.
For the Greens, the decision is explosive
With the agreement on a reform of the EU’s asylum law, something amazing was achieved on Thursday. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser speaks of a “historic success for the European Union”. It is clear that this would not have happened without the approval of the Federal Government. And there can’t be approval without the Greens, not without the support of Baerbock. For her party, however, the decision is explosive. The situation worsens every day on their trip to Latin America.
Even before Baerbock gets on the “Theodor Heuss” on Sunday to fly to her first stop in Brasilia, she tries to make a serve. An interview appears in which she promotes the reform of the asylum law. Above all, the EU Commission’s proposal for asylum procedures at the EU’s external border is causing a bad mood in her party. Baerbock says that the EU has not had a functioning common asylum policy for years, is an “open wound”.
For the first time since 2015, there is a compromise proposal that has a chance of bringing together the different concerns in the EU. She mentions the profit: it is crucial that you come to a solidarity distribution. And the price: the border procedures, which she calls “highly problematic”. But one negotiates hard in Brussels, families with children should not come into the border procedure. When the interview appears, FDP politicians are already questioning the exception.
Party members criticize course of “deterrence and isolation”
Top Greens have been trying to calm the party for weeks. The mood is bad. Even Baerbock’s interview cannot soften the critics. The foreign minister believes that the distribution of the refugees is such a big step forward, such a big win, that it justifies a painful compromise. Especially since the procedures at the external borders would only affect those who have a low recognition rate. Instead, Syrians or Afghans could hope to be quickly distributed in Europe in the future. And if the reform fails, at least nobody should be able to say that the German Greens failed.
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