Who and what are behind the crisis
Chancellor Angela Merkel, widely viewed as a leader of liberal forces in Europe, is insisting on finding a wider European solution for the issue of refugees. However the dispute has exposed her government’s fragility at a difficult time for the continent.
Sibling rivalry: Two parties have made up Germany’s mainstream centre-right in the post-Second World War era: the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), currently led by Merkel and the Christian Social Union, now led by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. The CSU exists only in Bavaria, and the CDU in Germany’s other 15 states.
The CSU is more conservative than Merkel’s CDU and its paramount aim is to maintain its dominance in Bavaria. Still, polls suggest that its absolute majority in the Bavarian state legislature is in danger in the Oct. 14 state election — and it is being challenged on the right by the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party.
Bavarian beef: Merkel has had an often-tense history with Seehofer, and their ties became really difficult after Merkel’s 2015 decision to keep Germany’s borders open as refugees streamed across the Balkans. Seehofer — then the governor of Bavaria, where most refugees first entered Germany — became a leading critic of her welcoming approach. In 2016, he threatened Merkel’s federal government with a lawsuit if it didn’t take measures to further secure the border. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an anti-migration hardliner, was invited to CSU meetings. Support for both parties still dropped significantly. Seehofer salvaged his job as party leader, but gave up the Bavarian governor’s job to younger rival Markus Soeder. Seehofer entered Merkel’s government as interior minister, promising a “master plan” to tackle migration.
Merkel and migration: Merkel herself has come a long way since the fall of 2015, when she said that there was no legal limit to the number of people who have a right to asylum and told Germans that “we will manage” the challenge of integrating refugees, many of them from war-torn countries like Syria and Afghanistan.