A tough workload awaits Chancellor Angela Merkel when she returns from her summer vacation tomorrow.
Since the German leader left for vacation three weeks ago, her approval ratings have slumped amid fears that the refugee crisis has transformed into a terrorist threat in the wake of two attacks committed by refugees and linked to Islamic State (IS).
German economic growth has also slowed, tensions in her conservative political bloc have flared again, Berlin’s fraught relations with Ankara have hit a new low and frictions between Russia and Ukraine have suddenly reemerged.
But the key question facing Merkel when she returns from her annual hiking trip in the Italian Alps is whether she will seek a fourth term as head of Europe’s biggest economy in next year’s national elections.
“I can imagine she will want to,” said Manfred Guellner, head of Berlin-based pollster Forsa.
Merkel has regularly waved off questions about her plans to stand in the elections, saying: “This is not the right point.”
Indeed, the most likely time for Merkel’s announcement will be at her conservative Christian Democrats’ (CDU) annual conference in December when she will face a vote as CDU party chief.
The chancellor was forced to break her vacation twice due to the recent series of violent attacks in the nation.
Together with a recent round of arrests and counter-terrorism raids, the attacks underlined the enormous political risks of Merkel’s decision last year to open Germany’s borders to refugees fleeing wars in Africa and the Middle East.
Until the attacks, the refugee crisis had largely disappeared from the headlines in Germany as the nation largely absorbed about one million refugees who arrived in the country in 2015.
Now, however, the attacks have reopened the national refugee debate.
Merkel has come under fire from the CDU’s Bavarian-based allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), over her handling of the asylum seekers.
An early test of Merkel’s current political standing is likely to come next month when voters in the capital Berlin and the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern go to the polls.
The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) is expected to make further gains in both elections as a result of growing support for its anti-immigrant programme.
“Mrs Merkel has significantly contributed to a considerable polarization of the population as a result of the refugee issue, which has benefited the AfD,” the Social Democratic premier of eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Erwin Sellering, told the daily Tagesspiegel.
For the moment, the chancellor has the strong backing of the CDU to head up the party’s 2017 campaign.
After all, there are no party challengers to her reign.
Despite the slump in her public approval ratings, the polls also show that a Merkel-led CDU remains most likely to head up the next government after next year’s national election.
Guellner points out that Merkel and the CDU were in worse shape in the polls in 2011, after she mounted a dramatic U-turn in her energy policy by abandoning her support for atomic power following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
“Two years later, she scored a major election win in 2013,” Guellner recalled.
While she has been on holiday, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has unveiled a comprehensive package of tough new security measures.
Even before Germany goes to the polls in September next year, the chancellor will have to deal with issues that could shape the future of Europe; Britain is likely to formally launch negotiations to exit the European Union before the elections.