German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in the fight of her political life – and could lose her job within days – as her fragile governing coalition appears ready to implode over immigration.
“We are in a serious situation because the question of the migration crisis evolved into a power question,” German lawmaker Kai Whittaker told the BBC on Saturday.
“It could well be that at the end of next week we have a new situation… Probably a new chancellor.”
The crisis stems from a revolt over Merkel’s “open-door” migration policy, which she declared in 2015 to aid Syrian refugees.
Instead, it launched a surge of at least 1.6 million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into Germany and its European Union neighbors – setting off a cascade of housing, employment, crime and other problems.
The looming political showdown pits Merkel against Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, the leader of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party.
On Monday, Seehofer plans to order German border guards to refuse entry to migrants who have already registered in other European countries.
That would mark a sharp departure from the EU’s Schengen zone principle, which erases border controls like passport checks between member nations – an affront that Merkel has said she will not tolerate.
“This is a European challenge that also needs a European solution,” she said Saturday. “And I view this issue as decisive for keeping Europe together.”
Merkel, who has long worked to hold an increasingly frayed European Union together, has proposed that a “coalition of the willing” EU members agree to care for a set percentage of migrants as they arrive.
She plans to negotiate a deal at a meeting of the European Council in late June.
But Seehofer’s party, based in conservative Bavaria, faces a tough challenge from far-right parties in state elections this October.
“We must finally secure our borders effectively,” Bavarian CSU leader Markus Söder tweeted last week. “This, of course, includes rejection. Asylum tourism must be terminated. Germany cannot wait endlessly for Europe, but must act independently.”
Merkel, who has been in power since 2005, has struggled to maintain control of Germany’s multiparty system in recent months.
Centrist and liberal parties, like her own Christian Democratic Union, lost seats in last September’s elections to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which strongly opposes her immigration policy.
It took Merkel almost six months to cobble together a governing coalition. A fight with Seehofer could shatter their parties’ uneasy alliance.
That would leave her, once again, without a parliamentary majority – and could trigger new national elections.
A poll published Thursday found 86% of Germans in favor of stricter border controls for immigrants seeking asylum.
Anti-immigrant tensions are running high in the wake of the May 22 rape and murder of 14-year-old Susanna Feldman – allegedly at the hands of a 20-year-old asylum seeker who fled back to his home in Iraq to escape police questioning.