What Could Go Wrong? Merkel’s New Foreign Policy Chief Organized Her Refugee Policy
Jan Hecker engineered Merkel’s infamous Migrant Deal with Erdogan Regime, German media confirms
German Chancellor Angela Merkel promoted the architect of her open borders policy to her new chief foreign policy adviser. Merkel’s hand-picked Jan Hecker, widely regarded as the man enforcing Germany’s ill-advised refugee policy, has no foreign policy experience. Mainstream media that nitpicked President Trump on every single appointment, is apparently giving a pass to their favorite world leader on this one.
British tabloid The Express, however, was frank in its judgement. “Has she learned nothing?” the daily asked, “Merkel’s new foreign policy don organised open-door immigration.” “Jan Hecker worked on the controversial refugee policy from October 2015, after Mrs Merkel announced Germany would take more than one million migrants,” the newspaper added.
German newspaper Die Welt profiled Jan Hecker on Wednesday:
Angela Merkel has made a key appointment to the Chancellor’s Office. Jan Hecker will be heading the Foreign and Security Policy (Department II). (…) The 50-year-old Hecker is not a trained diplomat. He worked as a lawyer for the Interior Minister and the domestic intelligence agency (BfV), and later became judge at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.
From there he was brought back to Berlin in the Autumn of 2015 by Peter Altmaier, the head of the Chancellor’s Office and [tasked with] sorting out the chaos created at that time by the open borders. As the head of the newly formed coordination team for the refugee policy, Hecker organised the resettlement of hundred and thousands of refugees supported by a small team of civil servants, lawyer and [army] officers. It was a success. No asylum seeker had to hunger or freeze in the winter of 2015-16.
By 2016, Hecker took his place in Merkel’s inner circle. On her behalf, he oversaw how the creation of the “hot spots” and EU-run refugee camps were coming along in Greece. Most importantly, he facilitated Merkel’s [Mirgant-] Deal with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. [Translation by the author]
Merkel may well go down in the history as the most polarizing leader of the post-war Europe, her Christian Democratic Party (CDU) may have suffered its worst election result in almost seven decades, but — going by her post-election utterances — Merkel sees her successful reelection-bid as an endorsement of her pro-EU and open doors policies. She hopes to lead the next coalition, a patchwork alliance of ecological Greens and pro-business Free Democrats.
Lauded as the chief-architect of the EU-Turkey Migrant Deal, Hecker must have also negotiated the secret deal to accept 150,000 to 200,000 Syrian migrants from Turkey, an agreement reached between Merkel and Turkey’s President Erdogan – without consulting leaders of other EU member states. Germany vehemently denied the existence of any such secret deal. The European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans dismissed allegations of a secret migrant deal as “nonsense”. In March, however, Die Welt published the details of the resettlement plan agreed with Turkey. German Government did not dispute the newspapers findings.
Hacker certainly has his work cut out for him.
Lately, Germany’s interim Foreign Minister and country’s Vice Chancellor has been busy hurling threats at US President Trump if he were to cancel the Iran Nuclear Deal. “Gabriel warns Donald Trump: revoking Iran deal could push EU to Russia and China,” reported German public broadcaster on Thursday. “It’s imperative that Europe sticks together on this issue,” Gabriel told a German newspaper. “We also have to tell the Americans that their behavior on the Iran issue will drive us Europeans into a common position with Russia and China against the USA.”
Last month, Merkel too floated her ‘brilliant’ idea of an “Iran-style” deal for North Korean. “If our participation in talks is desired, I will immediately say yes,” Merkel said.
If Merkel and her right-hand man Gabriel have their way, who knows, perhaps Hecker will feel just at home in his new position: merely shifting his professional focus from one policy disaster to another.
Video: “A coalition deal by Christmas,” says Chancellor Merkel
[Cover image YouTube]
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Good-news/Bad-news: the German Foreign Ministry is largely meaningless in the EU structure. He will have less power to do any more damage than Merkel had dictated through the EU already.
In the last century, Germany started two wars and was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions.
Let’s see how this plays out.
Senior German officials declared war on candidate Trump early in 2016 and have never surrendered. Their verbal volleys against him during the campaign were surely noted by Trump.