Asylum seeker policy threatens to split Merkel coalition

ANGELA MERKEL was facing a possible government crisis yesterday as a deep rift opened with one of her coalition partners over migrant policy.

The German chancellor was locked in a stand-off with her interior minister over plans to turn away asylum seekers at the German border.

Horst Seehofer abruptly called off a press conference scheduled to announce his new policy as it emerged Mrs Merkel had blocked the plans.

But Mr Seehofer – leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Mrs Merkel’s Bavarian sister party – refused to back down, leading to fears of an internal power struggle as any move to fire him could lead to a coalition collapse.

At the centre of the dispute are Mr Seehofer’s plans to turn away asylum seekers who are already registered in another EU country at the German border. Under EU rules, Germany can already send asylum seekers back to the first member state they entered.

But cases are only decided once migrants have applied for asylum and few are actually deported: last year only 7,100 out of 64,000 such cases resulted in deportation,

Mr Seehofer wants to change that by turning away such migrants at the border. But Mrs Merkel is said to fear such a move could anger other EU countries and wreck her efforts to negotiate a new Eu-wide migrant policy.

“As far as I am concerned, we will apply European law. Because I only see a solution in European regulation,” she told German television.

Mr Seehofer was set to announce the new measures as part of an asylum “master plan” yesterday but is said to be in no mood to water down key proposals, and reportedly told MPS at a party meeting he would not release “half a plan with lazy compromises”.