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* End of austerity, ECB policies fuel euro concerns
* Merkel government steps up rhetoric in response to AfD
* Anxiety that German sway over reforms is waning
By Noah Barkin
BERLIN, April 14 (Reuters) - The euro zone crisis is back - at least in the minds of many Germans.
Since last summer, the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war-torn Middle East has overshadowed all else, dominating the political debate in Berlin and the front pages of German newspapers.
But over the past weeks a shift has taken place. With the tide of arriving migrants slowing to a trickle, angst over Europe's long-suffering currency bloc has returned - with a vengeance.
"A storm is brewing," warned an editorial in the left-leaning daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung this week.
"Sometimes the fate of a people is decided in moments where there is not so much drama. That is what is happening now with Europe's currency union."
The renewed focus on the euro zone is tied to a series of distinct yet interconnected developments that have deepened the sense of anxiety in Germany's political and media establishment.
These include the shift away from austerity in southern Europe, the loose money polices of the European Central Bank and recent changes in the German political landscape.
One month ago, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing populist party that had railed against Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policies, surged into three state parliaments, stunning the established parties and forcing them into a strategic rethink.
Merkel's conservatives emerged from this discussion convinced that they must do everything in their power to shift the domestic debate away from refugees, officials told Reuters.
Since then, party leaders, led by Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, have stepped up their verbal attacks on the ECB's low interest rate policies.
Their fear is that the AfD, founded three years ago as an anti-euro party, could seize on this theme too in the run-up to the next federal election in 2017.
One senior coalition leader described the rates debate as "the next big theme for the AfD".
Low rates are an especially sensitive topic in Germany because they are seen as eroding the savings of millions of people who have squirrelled away cash in banks for their retirement. The AfD was quick to jump on ECB President Mario Draghi's comment last month that "helicopter money" - whereby a central bank hands cash directly to euro zone citizens to bolster inflation - was a "very interesting" concept.
"It is an opportune time to complain about the ECB right now," a senior official close to Merkel acknowledged this week.