Failing coalition talks are worrying many around German Chancellor Angela Merkel, including a senior figure in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party who warned that a snap election could be a “disaster” for the establishment.
Senior CDU politician and current Schleswig-Holstein Minister President Daniel Günther is sounding the alarm to other members of his party saying that a coalition deal between the CDU/CSU, the libertarian Free Democrats, and the Green Party must be agreed on soon.
Günther said that the CDU needed to concede more to the demands of the left-wing Greens on asylum seeker issues or they may trigger a snap election which he said would be a disaster for Merkel’s party and would fuel the continued rise of “extremism”, Der Spiegel reports.
A new election, “would be a signal of the incapacity of democratically elected parties and be a breeding ground for extremists”, Günther said, likely a nod to the massive gains of the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) in September’s election where they became the third largest party in the Bundestag.
Much of the current dispute between the three parties of the so-called “Jamaica Coalition” (named after the official colours of the parties involved) stems around asylum seekers.
The Greens have insisted that failed asylum seekers from Afghanistan should not be deported because the country is too dangerous, while Merkel promised last year that she would seek to increase deportations of failed asylum seekers.
Despite the promise, very few asylum seekers have been deported and Horst Seehofer, head of the CDU’s sister party the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), said that large-scale deportations were “almost impossible“.
Merkel Ally: Deportation of Quarter of a Million Failed Asylum Seekers ‘Almost Impossible’ https://t.co/KApU0ZeBV3
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 13, 2017
Migrant family unification has also been a subject of disagreement, with the CDU wanting to limit the number of reunifications and the Greens arguing that no limit should exist.
Late last month, CSU negotiator Alexander Dobrindt accused the Greens of deliberately attempting to make the talks a failure.
“The Greens provoke the failure of Jamaica. Anyone who presents their arguments completely unreflected by the refugee crisis, the polarisation in our country, the resulting electoral successes of the AfD, and the tensions in Europe, seems to have no serious interest in forming a government,” he said.
The latest polling shows the CDU still in a comfortable first and the AfD in third, but a collapse of the coalition talks could shake up the political landscape and some say it would be unlikely that Angela Merkel would lead the party if a snap election were called.
Germany, Forsa poll:
CDU/CSU-EPP: 32% ↓
SPD-S&D: 21% ↑
AfD-EFDD: 12% ↑
FDP-ALDE: 11%
GRÜNE-G/EFA: 10% ↓
LINKE-LEFT: 9%— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) November 6, 2017
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