A rebellion over immigration in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc is threatening the stability of her fragile coalition. Merkel’s weekend decision to veto a plan by her interior minister aimed at controlling and reducing illegal migration, and the minister’s refusal to back down, has already shattered an uneasy truce between conservative backers and opponents of her liberal asylum policy, just months after a tenuous coalition government was formed.
Specifically, Merkel is facing a rebellion from her hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who demands that German border police be given the right to turn back migrants without identity papers or who are already registered elsewhere in the European Union. The chancellor fears that such a move would be seen as further antagonizing already stretched nationalist tentions across the EU and be seen as Germany going it alone, hurting over-burdened frontline Mediterranean countries such as Italy and Greece, and has urged a negotiated EU response instead.
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