Was Angela Merkel affected by terrorist attacks in Germany?

After a series of terrorist attacks in Germany that were carried out over one week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a big press conference, where she promised to thoroughly investigate these acts of aggression.

"The attacks of refugees in Germany is a mockery of those people who help them and those migrants that really need protection," she said, adding that Berlin will continue to receive people fleeing from war, as the Convention on refugees requires.

Vestnik Kavkaza asked associate professor of European law at the MGIMO university Nikolay Topornin and director general of the Political Information Center Alexei Mukhin how these terrorist acts will affect political future of Germany and Angela Merkel.

First of all, Topornin noted that these incidents already had a negative impact on Chancellor's rating. "There is a decline in popularity of Merkel, but it's not critical. Voters begin to like right-wing radical parties, especially 'Alternative for Germany'. All of this may lead to the situation when during next parliamentary elections in the autumn of 2017, right-wing parties will gain significantly more votes and 'Alternative for Germany' may even become third party in the parliament, which is an indication of crisis," he said.

However, according to expert, Merkel's positions are still serious, since a significant part of the population supports the economic policy pursued by German government. 

"German economy is currently in a very good situation: unemployment decreases, inflation rate is close to zero, so prices almost don't increase. At the same time, incomes of lower segments of the population (pensioners, disadvantaged) are increasing," he pointed out.

"However, right now there is a problem that on the one hand, Germans are satisfied with overall economic situation in Germany, but when it comes to migration issues and terrorist acts, more and more people are thinking about changes to the federal government's policy," he summed up. 

Alexei Mukhin expressed opinion that Angela Merkel's popularity will continue to decline even further. "The thing is, Merkel is a symbol of a prosperous Europe, successful European project. Now, as new challenges appear and anger in society grows, of course she will be blamed for it. It is clear that Merkel is someone who won't stay for too long, she won't serve as a Chancellor in the future. And, apparently, there is a very serious selection of a new candidate," he said.

However, according to expert, regardless of who becomes the head of government, "Germany will stay at the path of multiculturalism, tolerance and eradication of any king of historical complexes."

As both experts noted, right now all intelligence agencies in Europe act separately, despite certain coordination. In addition, the EU had contradiction between unified migration policy and lack of unified anti-terrorism agency, which results in failures in special services' work.

"The EU and individual European countries like France, Germany, Italy, are destined to cooperate with Russian special services, which have very deep and very useful experience in the fight against terrorism," Mukhin concluded.