German Chancellor Angela Merkel held emergency talks with her party bloc to stem a revived dispute over her refugee policy that threatens to weaken her leadership.
In an echo of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016, Merkel is being pressed by Bavaria’s Christian Social Union party to turn away some refugees at the German border rather than processing them when they arrive. Merkel rejects unilateral measures and is seeking a broader European solution, setting up a clash with a party that helps secure her parliamentary majority.
Merkel’s bloc, which comprises her Christian Democratic Union and the CSU, interrupted a lower-house session in Berlin on Thursday for unscheduled meetings to try to find a compromise. That followed more than two hours of inconclusive talks on Wednesday evening between the chancellor and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who heads the CSU.
A majority of Merkel’s parliamentary caucus indicated at a meeting this week that they might not support the chancellor’s open-borders line. A defeat for Merkel would undermine her authority with her bloc and might ultimately render her a lame-duck leader and hasten her demise.
“It’s decision time,” Bavarian premier Markus Soeder told reporters Thursday as the standoff dragged on with the CSU showing no sign of backing down. “Sometimes we have to think of our home population, not all of Europe.”
In a challenge to Merkel, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who won power last year on an anti-immigration platform, met Seehofer in Berlin on Wednesday and called for an “axis of the willing,” starting with Italy, Austria and Germany, to counter illegal migration.
Merkel later said that could only be part of a broader approach. “The point is a pan-European solution,” she said. Rejecting migrants at the German border instead of acting in concert within the EU could do “significant damage” to the bloc, Merkel said after a separate meeting with Kurz.
Seehofer emerged as Merkel’s most prominent domestic critic on migration during the refugee crisis when more than 1 million people arrived in Germany. He joined Merkel’s fourth-term cabinet in March as interior minister, the top federal law enforcement post.