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Merkel Pledges to Put Lid on German Coalition Clash This Weekend

Published 22/09/2018, 04:52 am
Updated 22/09/2018, 07:38 am
© Reuters.  Merkel Pledges to Put Lid on German Coalition Clash This Weekend

© Reuters. Merkel Pledges to Put Lid on German Coalition Clash This Weekend

(Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government will reopen its decision to move Germany’s domestic intelligence chief to another job, pledging a resolution this weekend to a crisis exposing her coalition’s fragility.

Merkel backtracked three days after leaders of the two other coalition parties agreed to remove the official, Hans-Georg Maassen, who defied Merkel by suggesting that a video of far-right protests in August might be fake. Outrage erupted among her Social Democratic coalition partners when it emerged that Maassen would be promoted to another government job with higher pay.

With SPD head Andrea Nahles calling on Friday for the deal to be re-examined, Merkel and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who heads her Christian Democratic Union’s sister party in Bavaria, said they were open to revisiting the Maassen case.

“I think that’s right and necessary because, in view of the many foreign and domestic challenges, we need full concentration on the task of government,” Merkel told reporters at a hastily scheduled appearance in Munich on Friday evening. “We want to find a lasting, joint solution over the course of this weekend.”

German Gridlock

The reversal is evidence that gridlock risks becoming the norm in Merkel’s coalition, which took office in March after support for her CDU-led bloc and the Social Democrats both fell to historic lows in last year’s German election. Like much of the turmoil in her fourth term, the conflict is part of the political fallout from the refugee crisis that hit Germany in 2015.

As Merkel seeks to focus on global issues from trade conflict with the U.S. to the war in Syria, she’s fighting a slow erosion of authority at home after almost 13 years in office. The next federal election isn’t due until 2021.

It’s the second time this year that Seehofer has clashed with Merkel, even though their two parties are allied at the national level. In June, a conflict over the CSU’s demand to crack down on asylum seekers at the German border pushed Merkel to the brink of losing her parliamentary majority.

Poll Slump

The latest strife was stoked by a looming state election in Bavaria and Seehofer’s expressions of support for Maassen, whose federal agency is responsible for domestic surveillance of extremist threats, including neo-Nazis. Polls suggest the CSU will lose its majority in the Bavarian legislature in the Oct. 14 ballot and support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party will surge.

Support for the CDU-CSU fell to 28 percent in an Infratest Dimap poll for broadcaster ARD, the lowest level since the poll’s inception in November 1997 and almost 5 percentage points less than the bloc’s tally in the 2017 election. Alternative for Germany, or AfD, rose 2 points to a record of 18 percent, according to the Sept. 17-19 poll of 1,035 people.

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