|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The two parties embroiled in Germany’s escalating political crisis gave themselves one last chance to resolve their differences, agreeing to meet at 5pm Berlin time on Monday for talks that could seal the fate of Angela Merkel and her three-month-old coalition government.
If the two fail to bury the hatchet, Horst Seehofer, interior minister and leader of Ms Merkel’s Bavarian sister party the CSU, has said he will resign, a move that would mark a historic rupture in the centre-right of German politics.
After a stormy, eight-hour meeting of the CSU executive in Munich, Mr Seehofer said on Sunday night he was prepared to step down from both his posts but had offered last-ditch talks to Ms Merkel’s CDU “in the hope we can reach agreement”.
He said the offer was a “concession” by him and the CSU to the chancellor. “Otherwise everything would have been final,” he said.
At issue is a conflict between the two sister parties over migration policy, which has re-emerged as the most explosive issue in German politics.
Mr Seehofer proposed last month that German border police be given the power to turn away refugees if they were already registered in other EU countries. Ms Merkel said such unilateral moves would lead to a cascade of border closures throughout the EU that would endanger the Schengen passport-free travel zone and threaten European unity. She also hinted that she would sack Mr Seehofer if he persisted with the policy over her objections.
Ms Merkel pleaded for time to come up with a pan-European solution, and claimed that an EU summit in Brussels last week had done exactly that. EU leaders agreed on a package of measures to crack down on illegal migration and address the problem of “secondary movements” of asylum seekers across internal EU borders — the issue at the heart of the CDU/CSU spat.
But the row between the two parties has deeper roots. Mr Seehofer and Ms Merkel have butted heads ever since the chancellor decided to leave Germany’s borders open at the height of the refugee crisis in September 2015, when tens of thousands of migrants were streaming into the country.
Though they patched up their differences last year, they continue to hold wildly divergent views on an issue that has left a faultline through the heart of German politics and for the first time since the second world war allowed a far-right party — the anti-establishment Alternative for Germany — to win seats in the Bundestag.
The disagreement between the two leaders threatens to shatter the CDU/CSU alliance, a union that has formed the bedrock of German politics for nearly 70 years . A divorce could also lead to the collapse of Ms Merkel’s “grand coalition” government and throw the future of the EU’s longest-serving leader into doubt.
Sunday was a day of high drama in Munich, where the CSU party executive, which faces a challenge from AfD in October regional elections, came together to discuss the dispute over asylum policy.
Mr Seehofer rejected the Brussels deal Ms Merkel had helped negotiate, saying it was “inadequate” and “not as effective” as his own policy proposal. He said a meeting he had held with Ms Merkel on Saturday evening was “futile and pointless”.
But it became clear in the course of Sunday’s meeting that the CSU leader did not have the full support of the party executive, with many moderate members praising the deal Ms Merkel brought home from Brussels and arguing against an escalation of the conflict with the CDU.
According to German media, Mr Seehofer told participants he had three options: bow to Ms Merkel on asylum policy; go ahead with his plan for tougher border controls, knowing that it could blow up the CDU/CSU alliance; or resign as party chief and interior minister. He said he had chosen the third option.
But CSU colleagues persuaded him to stay on and try one last time to resolve the party’s differences with Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.
“Seehofer and the CSU manoeuvred themselves into a blind alley,” said Frank Decker, a political scientist at Bonn university. “In the end his only options were to move ahead with the border closure, and risk getting the sack, or resign.”
It remains unclear whether a compromise is possible between CDU and CSU to defuse the crisis. On Sunday, a separate meeting of the CDU party executive threw its weight behind Ms Merkel and her EU summit deal. The battle lines appear to have been drawn.
It is also unclear what would happen if Mr Seehofer did resign. The other CSU ministers in Ms Merkel’s cabinet would face pressure to quit in protest if he were sacked, but they might stay on if he steps down of his own accord.
Earlier on Sunday, Ms Merkel had praised the deal negotiated in Brussels, saying it represented substantial progress on the migration issue.
“Of course, we did not solve the problem, but I never promised anyone that we would,” Ms Merkel said in an interview on the ZDF, the television broadcaster. “But honestly, two weeks ago I wasn’t sure I would achieve what we just achieved.”
