Merkel under fire Migrant crisis threatens government

Brussels calls leaders to crunch summit as crisis threatens to undermine chancellor’s authority

Angela Merkel was under pressure at home and abroad last night as EU leaders got ready to meet in Brussels amid deep divisions over how to handle the bloc’s migrant crisis. The German chancellor is facing threats from coalition partners to pull down her government if she does not win concessions from EU partners.

ANGELA MERKEL was under fire at home and abroad last night as European Union leaders prepared to meet in Brussels today for a crunch summit to resolve their differences over the bloc’s three-year migrant crisis.

The German chancellor will arrive in Brussels with her Bavarian CSU coalition partners still threatening to pull down her government and Italy and other eastern EU states determined to defy her once-unquestioned authority.

The EU summit comes after a turbulent week for Mrs Merkel that has exposed her growing weakness at home, as coalition talks ended inconclusively, and divisions in the EU over how to address the migrant crisis.

Donald Tusk, the European Council president, warned leaders that the debate was becoming “increasingly heated” and that the EU’S failure to defend its borders was handing winning arguments to populists with a “tendency towards overt authoritarianism”.

“The stakes are very high. And time is short,” he wrote in his invitation letter to leaders that also implicitly rebuked Mrs Merkel by warning that voters wanted to see leaders “restoring their sense of security” after 2015, when EU borders were effectively thrown open by the German leader.

Europe’s internal divisions were highlighted again yesterday in horsetrading over how to deal with a vessel in the Mediterranean carrying 230 migrants, which had been refused permission to dock in Italy or Malta for six days.

Malta finally gave permission for the Dutch-registered Lifeline to dock, but only after eight EU states – France, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Malta – agreed to take a share of the migrants.

Joseph Muscat, Malta’s prime minister, said the situation was “unique” and could not be considered a blueprint for future rescues.

But Italy, which is demanding reforms to the EU’S Dublin rule that requires migrants to be registered in the first EU country they land in, hailed it as a political “victory” for its campaign to share out all new arrivals.

Germany was a notable absentee from the list of accepting states, however, reportedly at the insistence of Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian CSU’S hardline interior minister who is demanding Italy and other EU states take back migrants who come to Germany.

The scale of the task confronting Mrs Merkel was clear from remarks made by Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, who was cheered in parliament yesterday when he proclaimed: “Whoever lands in Italy, lands in Europe. Italy’s coasts are Europe’s coasts.”

The draft EU summit conclusions put emphasis on offloading migrants back to non-eu states.