The number of asylum-seekers fleeing to Europe is back to pre-2015 levels, but the debate over migration has continued to create political turmoil including with a possible split in Germany’s ruling coalition.
The head of a political party long allied to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s threatened to resign over a conflict about migration policy.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer demands that the nation set its own restrictions on asylum-seekers, while Merkel wants a Europe-wide plan.
Seehofer’s gripe: Merkel’s EU-wide plan, hashed out in a meeting of European leaders last week, is in his words, “insufficient.” The two-day summit in Brussels resulted in leaders agreeing on measures that would make it more difficult for migrants to reach the European Union.
Merkel and Seehofer, whose Christian Social Union party is based in Bavaria, have sparred over migration policy since 2015.
This flare-up comes even as the number of asylum-seekers coming to Europe has dipped to pre-2015 levels, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
At the same time, however, Bavaria’s state elections in October are on the horizon and will come after Seehofer’s party lost votes to a more hard-line party against immigration, the anti-Islam Alternative for Germany, in last year’s federal elections.
Seehofer recently presented his own tough, so-called “master plan” on migration. It centers around refusing entry to asylum-seekers who have previously registered in other EU countries, a move that his party likely hopes will win back supporters who turned to the Alternative for Germany.
This debate between the sister parties in Germany’s ruling coalition had been boiling for weeks. Seehofer gave the chancellor until Sunday night to come up with a restrictive migration policy that pleased his party. If his terms weren’t met, he threatened to close the Bavarian border, a move he could enact as interior minister, although it would likely give the chancellor the right to dismiss him from his post.
Yet his surprise announcement that he would resign has left many questions unanswered. Will he follow through? If so, will his party propose a new candidate or will it pull out of the coalition, leaving the future of Merkel’s months-old coalition in jeopardy?
Leaders and lawmakers in Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, on Monday stressed the importance of maintaining the seven-year conservative alliance between their party and Seehoefer’s.
But some others in the governing coalition, like Foreign Minister Heiko Mass of the more liberal Social Democratic Party have reacted with ire. On Monday, he said: “I think the way in which this debate is being conducted is damaging not only Germany’s image, but first and foremost its government.”
The Social Democratic Party entered the governing grand coalition tentatively in March after six months of negotiations.
