Slammed by an Open-Door Policy

An astute politician and international charmer, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer would seem a hard man to bring down. He and his Green Party positioned themselves as the conscience of a nation, embracing environmental protection and popular liberal causes.

But the snowy-haired Fischer, who a few months ago was the toast of the tabloid press as he rushed about town with his 28-year-old girlfriend, faces a scandal that jeopardizes his career. He’s accepted responsibility for a poorly regulated visa program that allowed thousands of illegal immigrants, many of them Eastern European prostitutes, to enter Germany.

Conservative politicians are calling for his resignation. The Green Party is in turmoil because of the blow to its reputation. The crisis also threatens Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s coalition government at a time when painful social reforms and a 12.6% unemployment rate prevent him from gaining a mandate to bolster his reelection chances in 2006.

“Even the conservatives are astonished at how quickly this scandal developed,” said Olaf Gutting, a member of the opposition Christian Democratic Union. “I’m surprised how explosive this story is. Fischer and the Greens considered themselves super-moralists, but now that image is gone and they’re looking for scapegoats.”

Fischer acknowledged that he was “politically responsible” for mistakes at the Foreign Ministry but added that the matter had been exaggerated by the media and his opponents. A parliamentary investigation into the affair indicated that the Foreign Ministry was lax in responding to an increase in illegal immigration, even after complaints by law enforcement authorities and the issuing of visas to two suspected Chechen extremists.

Recent comments by Edmund Stoiber, leader of the conservative Christian Social Union, revealed the incendiary politics at play. He told the German media that if a parliamentary commission found that Fischer had failed to properly respond to the situation, he “would have to leave office. The public has a right to know what role [Fischer] played in the arrival of organized criminals from Eastern Europe.”

The roots of the scandal began in 2000, when the Foreign Ministry loosened Germany’s tough visa requirements at its embassies in Eastern Europe, most notably in Ukraine. German police warned that gangs exploited this relaxation by smuggling thousands of illegal immigrants into the country. Government records show that 217,000 visa applications were filed at the German Embassy in Ukraine in 2000. A year later, 330,000 applications were processed, and only 10% were rejected.

The Green Party’s Ludger Volmer was forced to resign last month. As a deputy foreign minister, he oversaw the scaling back of visa regulations, conceived in part, according to Fischer, to allow academics, businesspeople and relatives to travel more freely to Germany. But many Germans, facing the nation’s highest level of unemployment since the 1930s, are opposed to newcomers.

Fischer has been evasive about when he was informed of the visa matter and how he chose to act. In a speech to the Greens over the weekend, Fischer conceded that he had “not reacted fast, decisively and thoroughly enough.” Some analysts said it was uncharacteristic of the politically shrewd Fischer to have allowed such a problem to widen.

“I don’t think this will bring down Fischer,” said Peter Loesche, a political scientist at Goettingen University. “He nicely survived an attack on his character two years ago. But this is more severe. He is in charge of the Foreign Ministry and should have known what was happening.”

Fischer, 56, is one of Germany’s most popular politicians. Mischievous and quick-witted, he has made a career of outflanking his critics. A taxi driver turned radical leftist in the 1970s, Fischer wore sneakers when he was sworn in as a state minister in 1985. Pictures of him beating a German police officer during his militant days surfaced in 2001 but did little to hurt his stature.

Critics have labeled him an egotist, a man who too readily believes his own public relations machine. Opponents have sought to discredit him and his Green Party, marred in recent years by ideological divides and minor scandals. Conservatives sensed the visa issue could severely damage Fischer and the larger “Red-Green” coalition government of the Greens and Schroeder’s Social Democrats.

Schroeder’s close reelection in 2002 was largely propelled by the popularity of Fischer and his party. The chancellor needs Fischer to help him continue painful social and economic reforms, political analysts say.

Fischer is credited with helping to improve U.S.-German relations and trying to negotiate an end to the Iranian nuclear standoff. “Fischer is the most important politician next to Schroeder who is holding the coalition together,” Loesche said. “It would be terrible for the coalition if he had to resign. The reforms would be in serious jeopardy.”

Fischer, who is scheduled to testify before the parliamentary commission this spring, has said he is being unfairly tainted. He said some of the blame rests with changes to visa regulations in Ukraine that Germany’s conservative government made in 1998.

“It’s not as if criminal people-trafficking began under the Red-Green coalition,” he said. “It’s not as if forced prostitution began with Red-Green.”

Such comments have done little to stem heavy criticism in the German media.

“Everything is worse than we thought,” the newspaper Die Welt said in a commentary. “This is not just about the sloppiness or criminality of individuals. The visa policy was a key program in the Greens’ vision of a better world. They argued in favor of openness to the world while ignoring the darker side of society, the human-traffickers and criminals.”