Merkel survives, but for how much longer?

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany struggled to keep her government together Monday after her rebellious Bavarian interior minister first threatened to resign, then backtracked, and finally gave her a second ultimatum on creating a hard border with Austria to stem the flow of migrants.

By Monday afternoon, however, after the parties of Merkel and the Bavarian minister, Horst Seehofer, which are longtime partners, convened in a meeting described as largely harmonious, there were cautious signs of a denouement. Merkel and Seehofer met later in the day.

“We expect that an agreement will be reached tonight and that we will stay together,” Volker Kauder, a Christian Democrat official close to Merkel, said to resounding applause from both parties.

The clash between the chancellor and Seehofer, who is also the leader of the Bavarian conservatives in Merkel’s coalition, escalated late Sunday after eight hours of talks failed to resolve a standoff over a policy that would affect relatively few migrants but has become deeply political. Failure to end the stalemate could topple Merkel’s government and even end her long run as chancellor.

But whatever the outcome, after nearly 13 years in office, Merkel is weaker than she has ever been.

The first woman and the first easterner to run a reunified Germany, the chancellor is more than a beleaguered European leader who has stuck around for a little too long. Celebrated as a standard-bearer of liberalism and the post-1989 world order for more than a decade, Merkel’s spectacular decline has now also become a symbol for the decline of the values she represented for so long.

Ever since she welcomed more than 1 million migrants, often in the country illegally, to Germany in 2015 and 2016, nationalism and populism have made a comeback in a country that has long tried to escape the shadows of its past. Migration has become the topic that will most define her legacy and it has become a test for German democracy itself.

The number of new migrant arrivals are down to a small fraction of what they were. But the anti-immigrant far right has been gaining ground, nudging the entire political spectrum rightward — most strikingly, the Bavarian conservatives, who face state elections in October.

Seehofer, who was the premier of Bavaria when his state became the main gateway into Germany for migrants in 2015, says he wants Germany to block migrants at the border if they have no papers or have already registered in another European country.

Merkel, who has staked her legacy on upholding founding values of the European Union, like free movement across borders, insists on a coordinated solution with neighboring governments.