According to the news agency dpa, Seehofer said at a meeting of the CSU board that he was ready to vacate his offices.
Seehoffer wants to leave his posts of German interior minister as well as the head of Christian Social Union (CSU). CSU party sources confirmed to Reuters that Merkel’s Union partner had offered his resignation.
It is still unclear whether Seehofer’s resignation would cause the grand coalition of the CDU, CSU and SPD to implode. Whether Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in such a case, would survive a vote of no confidence, is also in question.
The Greens have announced that they would not rule out a coalition with the CDU, and the SPD in general in order to save Merkel. But if Seehofer’s party no longer wants to stay in the governing coalition with Merkel’s CDU and the center-left SPD, they could also pull all of their ministers out of Merkel’s cabinet, thereby ending the government’s majority in the Bundestag.
Seehofer had announced some two weeks ago his resolve to enforce a more stringent asylum policy, as he is bleeding votes to the AfD. His main concern was to refuse migrants who are already registered in another EU member state at the border.
At the the AfD’s party congress in Augsburg on Sunday, AfD politicians said that Seehofer’s asylum policy changes were insufficient.
Merkel has meanwhile rejected Seehofer’s proposal. After Merkel rejected his plan, Seehofer set the chancellor a deadline of July 1 to find a “European solution” to the issue of “secondary migration”.
The Chancellor has thus been relying on bilateral agreements with EU member states for the deportation of asylum seekers, but Seehofer has called Merkel’s plans meaningless.
At the EU summit on Thursday and Friday in Brussels, Merkel launched a joint action by the member states on the asylum policy. This relies above all on the protection of the EU’s external borders, but also on asylum camps in the EU’s external states and possibly in African countries.
On Saturday Merkel announced that she had reached agreements with the key EU countries to withdraw asylum seekers.
Gradually, however, several countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland countered her statement. Seehofer said he was disappointed after a conversation with Merkel on Saturday evening. Merkel’s agreements are meaningless, he noted.
Seehofer said the conflict with Merkel over migration was affecting the “credibility” of his role as party leader.
Merkel, who has been meeting in Berlin with the senior ranks of her own party, described the situation to colleagues as “very serious,” Germany’s ARD public television reported.