Merkel seeks migrant talks with EU
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeking talks with some EU member states on migrant policy before a leaders summit at the end of the month, a government spokesman said, in a last-ditch bid to avert a coalition crisis erupting this week.
The spokesman denied a report in Bild newspaper that Merkel was trying to arrange a special summit on migrant policy, saying such a meeting would be a matter for EU institutions.
“But of course the German government is having talks in this regard with several member states and the [European] Commission,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert tweeted.
EU states are deeply divided on how to deal with large numbers of people fleeing conflict, especially from the Middle East. The issue has come to a head in the last week with a new Italian government refusing to let a ship with hundreds of migrants dock at its ports. The ship arrived in Spain yesterday.
Time for a deal is pressing for Merkel, at loggerheads with her conservative Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who share power with her Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats in a loveless coalition.
In an extraordinary move, the CSU — facing a tough regional election in October — has threatened to defy her and today go ahead with plans for Germany to send back migrants already registered in other EU states.
This unilateral approach, a reversal of her 2015 open-door policy, would undermine Merkel’s authority and be a blow to the EU’s Schengen open-border system.
Such a direct challenge to Merkel would force her to fire Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, a Bavarian who has long been a thorn in her side on refugee policy.
There is even talk that the 70-year-old conservative parliamentary alliance between the CDU and CSU could collapse.
Seehofer told Bild am Sonntag newspaper: “No one in the CSU has an interest in bringing down the chancellor, to break up the CDU/CSU parliamentary alliance or to blow up the coalition.” However, in terms of substance, he showed no sign of shifting his position. “We want a solution for sending back refugees at our borders,” he said. Two other leading CSU members said they wanted to start implementing the policy quickly.
Merkel has asked the CSU to give her two weeks to come up with bilateral deals with some countries, such as Italy and Greece, similar to one agreed between Turkey and the EU in 2016.
Former Bavarian premier Guenther Beckstein suggested on Saturday that one way out might be for Germany to agree to the CSU policy but to implement it only after the EU summit, to give Merkel time to deliver her “European solution”.
Growing numbers of leading CDU figures, most of whom do not want to see Merkel fall even if they prefer the CSU’s tough stance on refugees, have called for the two to settle their differences.