2024-04-10 00:55:39
The refugee crisis caused serious tensions within the Union. In his memoirs, Schäuble describes alleged considerations for overthrowing the then Chancellor
The long-time, now deceased CDU politician Wolfgang Schäuble accuses the former CSU leader Edmund Stoiber in his memoirs of attempting a coup against Chancellor Angela Merkel during the 2015 refugee crisis. The CSU immediately raised doubts about Schäuble’s portrayal.
In excerpts from the memoirs published by “Stern”, Schäuble describes that the situation in the Union became difficult in the fall of 2015. “The highlight was the CSU party conference, when the Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU chairman (Horst Seehofer) defied the Chancellor like a schoolgirl. In the meantime, Edmund Stoiber also became active and fired Seehofer, his successor in the Prime Minister’s office, in his attacks against Merkel. And he wanted to persuade me to overthrow Merkel in order to become chancellor myself.”
He firmly rejected this, Schäuble writes in his memoirs. “Like Kohl decades before, I remained convinced that the overthrow of our own chancellor could only harm our party in the long term without really solving the problem. That was my understanding of loyalty, which perhaps seems a little antiquated by today’s standards.”
Stoiber was Prime Minister of Bavaria from 1993 to 2007 and chairman of the CSU from 1999 to 2007. During the refugee crisis, he repeatedly criticized Merkel’s course.
Stoiber: “I never commented on reports about it”
When asked by the German Press Agency in Munich, Stoiber said he did not want to comment on Schäuble’s account: He had only had as many personal and confidential conversations with few colleagues in his life, “as with my long-standing and closely associated colleague Wolfgang Schäuble.” “I have never commented on reports about this and of course that still applies to me today after his death.”
Seehofer told the “Augsburger Allgemeine” that he had heard nothing about Stoiber’s alleged attempts to overthrow Merkel. “Edmund Stoiber never spoke to me about replacing Angela Merkel – also because it was completely clear that he would never have been able to convince me to take such a path.” If Stoiber’s advance described in Schäuble’s memoirs had taken place, it would have happened without his knowledge. It was well known that Stoiber was a massive critic of Chancellor Merkel’s course on the refugee issue, said Seehofer.
Fundamental support for Merkel’s decision
In the passages published by “Stern”, Schäuble, who died in December, reiterated his fundamental support for Merkel’s decision to keep the German borders open to refugees in autumn 2015, but also expressed criticism of her actions. “When the Chancellor made the decision on September 4, 2015, which in retrospect was central to this crisis, to keep the borders open in view of the catastrophic conditions at the Budapest train station, where thousands of refugees were stranded, I thought this was for humanitarian and European policy reasons right,” he writes. At the time, Schäuble was finance minister in Merkel’s cabinet.
He supported Merkel to the best of his ability and he also found her sentence “We can do it” to be correct. “These were strong statements. They should have been accompanied by a number of other measures and efforts to make it clear that this unique emergency measure was irrepeatable.” In contrast to the Chancellor, he believed it was right to “give the citizens pure wine and make it clear that working for the refugees also involves costs and sacrifices.” He was occasionally frustrated “that Merkel remained resistant to advice in some respects. In my opinion, she would have had completely different options to really lead politically and not just react.”
Schäuble’s book “Memories. My Life in Politics” will be published next week. The CDU politician died on Boxing Day at the age of 81. In his long political career, Schäuble was head of the Chancellery, Federal Minister of the Interior and Finance, CDU chairman and President of the Bundestag. Most recently, he was a member of the Bundestag, where he served for 51 years – longer than any other member in German parliamentary history. He was buried in his hometown of Offenburg.