Frau Merkel is in a stand-off with her ally, Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister-party to her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and now Interior Minister in her tottering federal government. The row is centered on Herr Seehofer's asylum system reform plan, under which migrants who have already been registered as asylum-seekers in another European Union country would be turned away at the German border. Frau Merkel opposes such a ban, fearing that other countries will impose similar border controls.
Yesterday the CSU leadership agreed to delay introducing their entry ban until after a European summit to be held at month-end, allowing Frau Merkel time to seek an EU-wide solution. The compromise means Herr Seehofer can introduce immediate expulsion for people who have already been turned back at Germany's borders. "We wish the chancellor much luck," Herr Seehofer said at a presser in Munich. "This is not about winning time or anything like that but rather that in July, if there is no result at European level, we must implement this – that is a question for the functioning of our constitutional state."
Also on Monday, President Donald Trump, defending his own tough anti-immigrant polices, waded into the Germany debate on Monday with a series of tweets criticising Frau Merkel's open-border policy as a "big mistake" that had fuelled crime in Europe. POTUS wrote: "We don't want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!" And then this:
Further reading:
"Migrant overload spells doom for European Union" (retitled in some editions, for the sake of political correctness, as "Immigrant overload, not Brexit, heralds the end of the European Union") by Niall Ferguson, South China Morning Post, 18/6/18.
"EU official admits: Europe has no strategy for the impending new wave of migrants", by Christine Douglass-Williams, Jihad Watch, 28/11/17.
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