The German chancellor's biggest challenger on immigration policy is on record as saying just last month that crime in Germany was the lowest it had been in decades.
In the midst of a domestic battle over his own administration’s strict immigration policy, President Donald Trump took aim at Germany’s Angela Merkel on Monday – arguing in a tweet that the German chancellor’s more open policies toward migration and refugees had led to a crisis in her government coalition.
But in making his argument against Merkel’s “big mistake,” Trump claimed that crime in Germany was “way up.” That claim is not supported by recent statistics.
Trump tweeted, “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”
Notably, Merkel’s biggest challenger on immigration policy is on record as saying just last month that crime in Germany was the lowest it had been in decades.
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Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had released new crime figures in May that pointed to an overall decline in Germany over the past year. The figures showed that 5.76 million crimes were reported in 2017 – a drop of 5 percent from 2016 and the lowest number since 1992. Given the increases in Germany’s population, Seehofer told reporters in Berlin, this meant that Germany’s reported crime rate was at the lowest it had been for three decades.
To put it simply, “Germany has become safer,” Seehofer said.
Seehofer is the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), a hard-right Bavarian party that has long been a crucial coalition partner for Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In defiance of the German chancellor, Seehofer is seeking to impose new border controls on the country – a move that could see her coalition government collapse.
Later on Monday, after the U.S. president’s tweet, Seehofer offered Merkel a temporary reprieve and said he would not implement the new controls for two weeks. That could allow Merkel to reach deals with other European nations on migration, rather than turn migrants back unilaterally at the border.
Trump has a history of tweeting inaccurate statements about crime and immigration in Europe. However, it may not be surprising that Trump sees crime rising in Germany when in fact it appears to be falling – a considerable number of Germans feel the same way. One poll conducted in April, for example, found that 41 percent of the country felt that they were less safe in public spaces than five years ago. Fifty-one percent, however, felt nothing had changed.
A study from last year found that much of the blame lay with media organizations, which often tend to focus on migrant-related crime rather than crime by German citizens.
A close reading of German crime statistics does offer a complicated picture of crime trends. There has been a sharp rise in the number of non-German suspects interviewed by police in Germany over the past five years, for example, and although violent crime dropped 2.4 percent last year, it had already risen by 6.7 percent between 2015 and 2016.
There is certainly no doubt that the wave of more than a million refugees and migrants who arrived in Germany in 2015 and 2016 changed the country, resulting in strained relations between German citizens and their new guests. However, despite concern about immigration in the country, Merkel probably remains the country’s most popular political leader with a 50 percent approval rating this month.
Trump, meanwhile, continues to be viewed negatively by many Germans. In the same poll that found Merkel’s high approval rating, 87 percent of Germans were concerned that the U.S. leader was exacerbating international conflicts.