It was just another day at the office for Angela Merkel. Two afternoon problems – the prime ministers of Poland and the UK – were blessedly preceded by a morning pleasure: a visit from George Clooney.
The film star and UN goodwill ambassador, in town yesterday to promote Hail, Caesar! at the Berlin film festival, stopped by the chancellery to hail Merkel and her staying power in the migration crisis.
Joined by his wife Amal, a human rights lawyer, Clooney took time out from the Berlinale to visit some of the 1.1 million asylum seekers who came to Germany last year – and address the bind that Merkel finds herself in as a result.
Clooney said he “fully backed” the chancellor’s stance and said Germany deserved respect in a “difficult situation [of] great political responsibility”.
“It’s very difficult for her politically now,” Clooney said, “but I think it is important to keep this conversation going.”
Merkel’s conversation on migrants continued an hour later with the inaugural visit to Berlin of Poland’s new national conservative prime minister, Beata Szydlo.
Four months after Szydlo took office, Berlin officials noted that she was in no rush to visit. Nor did she bring anything with her on the tricky migration issue.
Like many of its central European neighbours, Poland was furious last year when Merkel set aside EU migration rules to allow into Germany Syrians trapped in Hungary.
Szydlo said her government would honour a previous commitment to accept its quota of 120,000 relocated asylum seekers – but no more.
The EU needed to adopt “effective and efficient” measures, Szydlo said, to keep people in the Syrian neighbourhood rather than attract them to Europe.
“My opinion is that the decisions to date in Europe have not been effective enough,” she said at a joint news conference. “For Poland, the permanent migrant quotas are not acceptable and we will discuss this. Poland wants to be an active EU member in solving this problem.”
Old cracks
After a quiet and constructive eight years under Poland’s last conservative-liberal administration, old cracks have re-emerged in the Berlin-Warsaw relationship since the return to office last October of Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Warsaw has taken exception at Germans’ vocal criticism of its rapid reform agenda, in particular controversial changes to the constitutional court and state broadcaster.
Szydlo is aware of talk, in Germany and elsewhere, that she is a mere front woman, with Poland's real power resting Kaczynski. Ahead of her visit, however, Szydlo made clear to Bild magazine that neither she nor Poland should be taken for granted.
She warned Germany to stop making “decisions over our head”, such as the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, bypassing Poland under the Baltic Sea.
At a joint press appearance of firm handshakes and fixed smiles, Merkel shot her visitor nervous glances and before settling for diplomatic ambiguity.
“I am delighted that we have begun close bilateral contacts,” she said, “and the atmosphere shows that we are able to talk about topics where we have to continue to work.”
Hospital project
In a bid to bridge differences the leaders announced plans to co-fund a joint hospital project near Syria and found a common line on Brexit, according Merkel: “It’s desirable to keep Britain in the EU.”
With that, the chancellor headed to Hamburg to meet her second problem PM of the day, David Cameron.
Both leaders were guests at the Anglophile port city’s annual St Matthew’s Day banquet, a tradition for 660 years.
After another long day, the German leader let Cameron do the heavy lifting in Hamburg’s ornate city hall, his last-chance EU reform saloon ahead of next week’s summit.
