Merkel faces crunch time in showdown on migrant policy

Bloomberg

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is about to find out whether party rebels against her migration policy are ready to back off or will push ahead with a political crisis that could deprive her of a parliamentary majority.
After weeks of tension stoked by a Bavarian regional party that’s threatening to send back more asylum seekers at the border, its leaders are meeting in Munich on Sunday to decide. Merkel will try to set the tone an hour earlier in an interview with national television, before chairing an executive-board meeting of her Christian Democratic Union in Berlin.
While the European Union’s deal on migration raises pressure on Bavaria’s ruling Christian Social Union, its leaders aren’t tipping their hand.
At stake is whether to risk a historic breakup of the party bloc that’s governed Germany for most of the time since World War II or seek a face-saving compromise.
Potentially conciliatory signs emerged over the weekend. Merkel and CSU head Horst Seehofer met at the chancellery in Berlin to discuss how to avoid a government crisis, Bild newspaper reported.
Merkel’s party published a position paper saying “we want to further reduce the number of refugees arriving in Germany.”
Yet the document also caused new conflict with its statement that 14 EU countries had made a “political commitment” to take back refugees who originally arrived on their soil but moved on to Germany. Government leaders in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland denied having made any commitment at the summit, according to German broadcaster ARD.
That raises doubts about whether the EU deal on migration will be fully implemented, Alexander Dobrindt, the CSU caucus leader in the national parliament in Berlin, was quoted as saying by Bild.
Merkel, who argues that one-sided border measures risk unraveling free travel in Europe, called the agreement among EU leaders an “important step in the right direction.” It provides an olive branch to the CSU by saying national governments should also take measures to counter secondary migration — people who seek asylum in EU countries other than the one where they arrived.
Polls suggest public support for the CSU’s stance and the regional leaders promoting it is waning.
An FG Wahlen survey said 91 percent favour European solutions on migration, an endorsement of Merkel’s line and a snub to Bavaria’s nationalist push for unilateral border measures.
Bavaria became a migration flashpoint during Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016 as the main transit point into Germany. Gains by the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, have returned the topic to the CSU’s agenda ahead of a state election in October.