Angela Merkel’s shrinking band of friends in the EU

Ructions in the EU increasingly are isolating Germany’s Angela Merkel.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pictured with Italy’s Matteo Renzi, has long been the pivotal figure of Europe, but change is brewing.

On November 17 German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a dinner party at Berlin’s distinctive Chancellery building. The guest of honour was outgoing US President Barack Obama, who had popped into Europe on his farewell tour. Merkel corralled her closest European ally, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to sit on the right of Obama, while she took the chair on his left.

Now, just weeks later, photographs of the event have passed into history. Renzi, the 42-year-old Prime Minister of Europe’s third largest economy — on financially shaky ground — has gone, officially by Christmas. He became a victim of his own hubris by tying a vote on his long-desired reforms to the Senate directly to his prime ministership. That vote, held on Sunday, was 60-40, a humiliating defeat, even if Italian foreigners in other countries, including more than 35,000 Australians, bucked the domestic trend and overwhelmingly supported Renzi.

Now, as Italy grapples with an extremely uncertain political future amid concerns about its deteriorating banking system that will ride right up to its scheduled 2018 election, Merkel too is trying to pick up the pieces of her disastrous open-door refugee policy. Her political support across the Atlantic leaves the White House on January 20, her closest European ally has deserted her and Socialist French President Francois Hollande will step down ­rather than face a crushing defeat in the French elections next year.

All of this leaves an increasingly isolated Merkel preparing for her own fourth term re-election campaign late next year, while all across the continent countries show signs of radical discontent and signal unprecedented pressures on the eurozone and the EU.

It was only in August that Renzi joined Hollande and Merkel in a carefully staged show of European solidarity against British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plans at the gravesite of one of the founding fathers of the European unity, Altiero Spinelli.

Said Renzi at the time: “We ­respect the choice made by the citizens of Britain but we want to write a future chapter, Europe after Brexit will relaunch the powerful ideals of unity and peace, freedom and dreams.”

Just four months later, such ­notions have a romantic, unrealistic tinge.

The reality is there is a heightened risk that Italy could now push to leave the eurozone — a position favoured by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, led by former comedian Bepe Grillo, and the far-right Northern League, headed by Matteo Salvini.

Yesterday in the EU bureaucratic heart in Brussels, various leaders were downplaying any residual impact of the Italian vote despite the leadership vacuum and rockiness of Italy’s banking system, including the dire state of its oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which could be in need of an immediate bailout or nationalisation. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD), which is in coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, was the most outspoken, saying the Italian result was not a positive contribution to Europe’s development, but tried to deflect the issues to Italy rather than Europe.

He said: “This is a government crisis, not a state crisis. It is not the demise of the Western world but it is not a positive contribution in the midst of our crisis situation in Europe.’’ Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble rejected claims there was a potential disaster brewing in Italy. “There is no reason to talk about a euro crisis,” Schaeuble said. “I think we have to take this with a dose of serenity. Italy urgently needs a government that is ready to act.”

Eurogroup head and Dutch ­Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said the economic situation in Italy hadn’t changed on the back of the referendum result. “The problems that we have today are the problems that we had yesterday,” he said.

The struggles of Italian workers and the costs to the state have ­exacerbated with the increasing numbers of migrant arrivals, ­including a surge in October. The UN High Commissioner for ­Refugees says that between January and October this year 160,000 people arrived in Italy by sea, nearly all from Nigeria, Eritrea, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Gambia. Less than 0.6 per cent were from war-torn Syria. In recent months the number of unaccompanied male children, mainly those claiming to be 16 or 17, has exploded. The EU response, which has little impact to date, is to try to tie increased aid funding to African countries if the flow of migrants is halted.

Meanwhile in France, the National Front is tipped to battle with a centre-right party, Les Republicains, and its leader Francois Fillon in elections in April and May next year, with the Socialists expected to be sidelined even though incumbent Prime Minister Manuel Valls has put his hat in the ring to contest the vote for the presidency.

An indication of the anti-establishment sentiment across Europe could be in The Netherlands general election on March 15. ­Far-right leader Geert Wilders continues to gain traction and leads the polls ahead of the ruling centre-right government of Mark Rutte.

Populist candidates have called for a reconsideration of their ­involvement in the EU and eurozone, and stronger controls on ­migration, centred on economic stagnation and the lowering standards of living brought about by lax borders and an inability to control irregular migrants from Africa. Marine Le Pen, from the far-right National Front, says: “After the Greek referendum, after Brexit, this Italian no adds a new people to the list of those who would like to turn their backs on absurd European policies which are plunging the continent into poverty.

“More broadly — and the ­impressive growth of the (far-right) Freedom Party in Austria shows just this — the global rejection of all the European Union’s policies, its economic and ­migration ones in particular, is speeding up on the continent.’’

Even if the swing to anti-establishment positions is not sufficient to win a ballot, the clamour of opinion has already shifted public positions of those who are in power.

Fearful of the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which in three years has attracted 14 per cent of the vote in Berlin’s state elections in August, Merkel looks at adopting some centrist positions.

Her government has already introduced a tougher family ­reunion policy to try to dissuade the migrants from heading to Germany, which slashed her popularity to less than 30 per cent.

Instead of automatic family ­reunion, single males can obtain only a temporary visa called “subsidiary protection’’, which must be renewed each year, and family ­reunification could take up to five years depending if they learn German and find work.

At the same time, German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has had to calm anger against refugees following a high-profile ­murder of a 19-year-old medical student who had volunteered at a refugee centre.

Maria Ladenburger was raped and murdered in Freiburg, Germany, allegedly by a 17-year-old unaccompanied refugee, who may have been involved in the death of another woman last month. The head of the local police union Rainer Wendt claims Germany had not been prepared for the dangers “that always go along with massive immigration”.

“Such horrible murders already happened before the first Afghan or Syrian refugee arrived here,” Gabriel said. “We will not allow incitement after such violent crimes, no matter who commits them.”

Nonetheless Merkel, in her two-day party conference in Essen, will have to consider further policies of appeasement put forward by members of her party, including one proposal to ban the niqab, another to refuse to recognise underage marriages and a third to streamline extradition of failed asylum-seekers. Such political expediency, coupled with her proven ability to hold the European project together across the past 16 years may be Merkel’s biggest attraction to voters worried about the upheaval all around them, even if the honoured dinner party guests are dwindling in numbers.