Merkel averts government split on migrants

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reached a deal on immigration to end a row which threatened to break up her four-month-old coalition government.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who leads her Bavarian CSU allies, has now dropped his threat to resign.

Mrs Merkel agreed to tighten controls at the Austrian border to stop people who have applied for asylum in other EU countries from entering Germany.

Transit centers will be set up to hold them until they can be sent back.

Mrs Merkel described the deal as a good compromise after tough negotiation.

But her center-left Social Democrat (SPD) partners in the coalition voiced skepticism. Their spokesman on migration, Aziz Bozkurt, told the daily newspaper Die Welt that “transit centers are in no way covered by the coalition agreement”.

The SPD rejected a proposal for such centers in 2015, when the migrant numbers entering Bavaria from Austria were far higher than now.

New border regime

Mr Seehofer’s conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) is the Bavarian sister party of Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).

The CDU-CSU deal speaks of a “new border regime” in Bavaria.

“After intensive discussions between the CDU and CSU, we have reached an agreement on how we can in future prevent illegal immigration on the border between Germany and Austria,” Mr Seehofer told reporters in Berlin.

The Austrian government says it is seeking clarification of that, and it is preparing measures to protect its southern borders with Italy and Slovenia.

What is the political compromise here?

Mr Seehofer had threatened unilaterally to empower border police to turn away migrants who had registered previously in another EU country.

Mrs Merkel opposed any such unilateral action – she insisted on agreement with EU partners.

Under her controversial open-door policy in 2015, more than one million migrants – many of them fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – entered Germany.

Under the new deal, transit centers will screen migrants and send back those registered elsewhere – provided Germany has a bilateral agreement with the country concerned. That is a more regulated procedure than what Mr Seehofer had demanded.

If there is no such bilateral agreement, a migrant will go back into Austria. But it is not clear whether Austria’s screening procedures will mirror Germany’s.

Mrs Merkel says Greece and Spain have agreed to take back migrants stopped at the Bavarian-Austrian border who are proven to have entered their countries first.

But Italy – where most irregular migrants arrive – does not want to take back migrants who reach Germany.

The divisions within the German government reflect a bigger split in the EU over migration. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland – the Visegrad Group – refuse to accept any migrants from other EU countries.