Four things to know about Angela Merkel’s migration showdown
The chancellor’s governing coalition is on the brink of collapse as the hardline party of Horst Seehofer refuses to back down. Here’s how Germany reached this point
Frankfurt — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s interior minister offered his resignation late on Sunday after his hardline Bavarian conservatives failed to budge her over plans to limit migration into Europe and Germany. Here are four things to know about background to the crisis and what’s at stake. 1. What do the rebels want? The confrontation is over Merkel’s refusal of one item in Interior Minister Horst Seehofer’s 63-point so-called "masterplan" for asylum and deportations. Seehofer wants the right to turn back at Germany’s borders asylum seekers already registered in another EU country. He and his Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party — a deeply conservative outfit allied for decades with Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) — argue the move would simply implement EU law known as the Dublin regulation. Merkel fears Germany unilaterally setting up border checks could cause a domino effect across the EU, undermining the Schengen free-movement zone and ...
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