Illegal land occupation

[webfact]

Merkel looks to Africa to cement a legacy shaped by migration

By Thomas Escritt

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde and heads of states of African countries pose for a family photo ahead of the 'G20 Compact with Africa' summit at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, October 30, 2018. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

 

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged on Tuesday a new development fund to tackle unemployment in Africa, a problem spurring the mass migration that has shaped her long premiership as it nears its end.

 

Merkel hosted a summit of African leaders a day after her announcement that she would retire from politics by 2021, which sent shockwaves across Europe and started a race to succeed her.

 

She needs the Compact with Africa summit to show that progress has been made in addressing the aftermath of one of the defining moments of her 13 years in power: her 2015 decision to open Germany's doors to more than a million asylum seekers.

 

The Berlin summit, attended by 12 presidents and prime ministers including Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, Ethiopia's Abiy Ahmed and Rwanda's Paul Kagame, is designed to showcase the continent as a stable destination for German investment.

 

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde is also there, along with a host of international development officials.

 

The aim is to create good jobs for Africans, easing the poverty which, along with political instability and violence, has encouraged large numbers to head for Europe. But with Africa's population growing at almost three percent a year, the task is enormous.

 

"We Europeans have a great interest in African states having a bright economic outlook," Merkel said in her opening speech, announcing the fund to help small and medium-sized enterprises from both Europe and Africa to invest on the continent.

 

The 119,000 Africans who arrived in Europe in 2018, according to the International Organisation for Migration, are the tip of the iceberg. International Labour Organisation figures show that 16 million migrants were on the move within Africa in 2014.

 

While European Union countries invested $22 billion in Africa in 2017, breakneck economic growth will be needed to help bring down the migrant numbers.

 

Berlin hopes Germany's manufacturing-based economy, which drove Eastern Europe's rapid economic growth after the 1989 collapse of Communism, could turn things round.

 

Merkel needs results fast if she is to ensure the leadership of her Christian Democrats passes to a centrist ally, such as its general secretary, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

 

GRAPHIC - Merkel's long reign:

 

A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AFRICA?

Other candidates for the party leadership, including Health Minister Jens Spahn or her old rival, the strongly pro-business Friedrich Merz, are well to her right politically and could be expected to want to challenge much of her legacy.

 

Merkel has said she will remain chancellor but that her current, fourth term up to 2021 will be her last. A whopping 71 percent of Germans welcomed Merkel's decision, a poll released Tuesday by broadcasters RTL and n-tv showed.

 

Germany has introduced tax incentives for its companies to set up plants in Africa, reflecting her view that state aid must give way to private investment if jobs are to be created in their millions.

 

This would be part of a "Marshall Plan for Africa" - named after the U.S.-funded plan that helped to rebuild European states including Germany after World War Two - that she sees as central to her legacy.

 

Merkel presented her decision to open Germany's borders in 2015 as an unavoidable necessity driven by the vast scale of the human tide, that year mostly fleeing the civil war in Syria.

 

An agreement with Turkey sharply curtailed the arrival of refugees into the EU through Greece. But hundreds of thousands of mainly African migrants continued to travel across the Mediterranean, a flow that finally began to abate in the past year with improved efforts to halt smuggling from Libya.

 

The crisis has upturned European politics, bringing the far right to power in Italy and Austria, and in Germany revitalising the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose demand that the country shut its borders to migrants helped to fuel its surge into parliament in last year's election.

 

A successful outcome to the summit may help to strengthen Merkel's case for remaining chancellor even after stepping down from the party leadership, and could quieten her coalition partners in Bavaria's conservative CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD).

 

All three parties have suffered punishing setbacks in regional elections this month, building internal party pressure for them to switch leaders or break up the coalition.

 

(Reporting by Markus Wacket, additional reporting by Michael Nienaber and Andrea Shalal, Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Andrew Heavens, David Stamp and Peter Graff)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-10-31

[meinphuket]

This disgusting woman should be made to stand trial for encouraging illegals to invade and causing so much unrest, violence, murder, rape both in Germany and its neighbours.

[phantomfiddler]

3 minutes ago, meinphuket said:

This disgusting woman should be made to stand trial for encouraging illegals to invade and causing so much unrest, violence, murder, rape both in Germany and its neighbours.

Wholeheartedly agree !!

[mercman24]

well its the german public voting her in every time. its a bit late now, Uk no diffferent, the  next UK elections are going to be interesting.

[micmichd]

Good to see there'll be more working people in Germany to contribute to the pension funds and keep the economy ongoing. 

[Lupatria]

It will get worse if you look at the list of possible successors.

I still don't understand how an undercover informant of the former "GDR" could become a chancellor of the unified (?) nation...

Quotation from Josef Wissarionowitsch Stalin: "In Germany there can be no revolution, because one may have to step on the lawn." 

 

[Media1]

As long as you stay in your own country.. All is good

[dick dasterdly]

AFAIK, the problem with trying to help Africa is that most of the money/goods are swallowed up by the corrupt. ☹️

 

Consequently, whilst I'm sure we all agree that "a new development fund to tackle unemployment in Africa" 

is great in theory - in practice, it seems unlikely. 

 

I'm sure Merkel is very aware of this, which makes me 'question' (....????) the real reason behind this latest 'initiative'....

[Krataiboy]

Where is the money coming from to fund this grandiose rescue plan for Africa? There are only five countries across the planet not already drowning in debt - none of them in Europe or members of the G20.  

 

Even if funds were somehow to be conjured up by digitital trickery on a bank computer, it would take decades to establish new industries on a scale required to generate new jobs on the scale required.

 

Meanwhile, what would be the fate of Europe, reeling from a decade of austerity and falling living standards and faced with the prospect of absorbing another tidal wave of migrants from the world's most impoverished, political corrupt and war-torn region?

 

The answer, as election results in Germany and elsewhere show, is becoming blindingly obvious to EU citizens suffering the ill-effects of enforced austerity - with worse to come if Mrs Merkel and her federalist cronies are allowed to pursue their globalist agenda of population replacement through mass immigration. 

 

No wonder the electoral worms are starting to turn. Hopefully, they will learn to bite.

[Trouble]

Seems many posters have a clear picture about the result of Merkel's actions and what it did for Europe in allowing the migration but when it comes to Trump trying to stop it in the USA he is a demon and racist. Most logical people would realize that trying to stop the international migration with all these grandiose schemes to boost the economic conditions in Africa or Central America where corruption is endemic is like trying to bail out the Atlantic Ocean with a bucket.  It's simply impossible. If you don't stop the migration by sending people back it will just continue. Facing the fact that there are just too many people on the planet for the amount of resources and ability to provide all with decent housing, food and health care, is something many people just don't seem to understand.