BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel and her dissenting Interior Minister Horst Seehofer met on Monday afternoon in an attempt to hammer out potential solutions to the asylum row that is threatening to topple Germany’s coalition government.
The meeting, also attended by Parliamentary Speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble, comes amid a last-ditch push by Merkel to appease Seehofer on migration policy, after he offered his resignation on Sunday over her refusal to introduce tougher controls at Germany’s borders.
Leaders from Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their more hardline Bavarian partners, the Christian Social Union (CSU),were originally set to meet at 5 pm (1500 GMT) in Berlin to see if a migration policy can be agreed upon. That meeting has since been delayed.
If no compromise is found, the decades-old CDU-CSU alliance could break up, robbing Merkel’s government of its parliamentary majority and imperilling her three-way coalition, which also includes the Social Democrats (SPD).
Seehofer wants Germany to unilaterally turn away migrants at the border who have already registered elsewhere in the European Union. He has indicated that he could be willing to remain as interior minister if the CDU backs down on its opposition to such measures.
Merkel is adamant that a common EU solution to reduce so-called secondary migration must be found, arguing that Seehofer’s policy would undermine the bloc’s core principle of free movement and weaken EU solidarity.
Both the SPD and the opposition Greens have said they are prepared for all outcomes, including fresh elections.
Last week, it seemed Merkel’s hand had been strengthened when she pulled an EU deal migration out of the hat at a Brussels summit, as well as moves towards bilateral agreements to return secondary migrants arriving in Germany.
Yet Seehofer dug his heels in, saying the deals would not be as effective as his proposals.
CDU sources said that Merkel rejected a compromise suggested by Seehofer on Saturday that would entail turning away only migrants who had formally submitted asylum requests in other countries.
On Monday, however, the CDU expressed willingness to make further concessions, saying in a statement issued after an emergency meeting that it was still “hoping for an agreement on a joint approach.”
Meanwhile, Seehofer’s hardline stance seems not to have resonated with the German public as he may have hoped.
More than two-thirds of Germans (69 per cent) support Merkel’s bid to find an EU solution to the problem of irregular migration instead of the unilateral path demanded by Seehofer, according to a survey. — dpa
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