Chancellor Angela Merkel battles for compromise with allies on migrant policy
Berlin — German Chancellor Angela Merkel struggled on Thursday to find a compromise on migrant policy with her rebelling Bavarian allies, hoping to avert a crisis in her coalition just three months after it took power. Merkel’s authority and the future of her alliance are at stake with Bavarian conservatives and Social Democrats at a time when divisions within Europe have come to a head over a ship carrying migrants that was refused entry to Italy. The showdown with Interior Minister Horst Seehofer and his Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) is over his Masterplan for Migration, a blueprint in which he wants to show voters a new tough line before a difficult Bavarian election in October. There was no immediate deal in sight after a “crisis meeting” on Thursday night. Parliamentarians from the CSU and Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), which form a parliamentary bloc, held separate gatherings in a sign of the depth of the row. The Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper quoted an unnamed ...
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