Germany has actually implemented reforms to encourage Germans (in fact Germans and immigrants, since these policies cannot target specifically German people, as that would be discriminatory and contrary to European and international law) to have babies. In fact Germany spends more on child/family policy than France now! Problem is, it's not working, or it's working only very marginally. The reason for that is cultural: after 40 years of low fertility, many German women simply do not desire 2 children anymore. No amount of money, benefit, etc, can change that.
At most, in the best of world, if German women could have their desired number of children, they would have 1.96 (French women would have 2.58). Source: Eurobarometer 2011. So if the German government got absolutely everything right, magically removed all barriers to procreation, it could bring Germany's fertility rate to 1.96 (and France could bring her to 2.58). In the real world, it's almost impossible to reach these figures, for all sorts of reasons.
As for Merkel's "solution", it is simply not sustainable. There are currently 4 million Syrian refugees in the Middle East. If they suddenly decided to take advantage of Merkel's "free entry" offer, that would collapse Germany's welfare state (and create a humanitarian disaster in Germany, as I can't see which logistic could feed and house 4 million people arriving all at once). Not to mention that from what I understand, Merkel extended her offer to people from Iraq and Afghanistan, so that's million more people who could now cross the Balkan and arrive in Germany if they are ready to contemplate the long journey.
How could a normally mature and cautious leader make such a foolish statement is beyond me.
__________________
New Axa – New Brisavoine
|
Threaded Mode