BERLIN — Germany’s interior minister raised the stakes in his immigration showdown with Chancellor Angela Merkel, telling leaders of his party he was willing to resign after rejecting as insufficient a European Union plan to limit inflows, according to a party member.
It was not immediately clear whether the offer by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, made after hours of talks late Sunday, would be accepted by his party, and what the implications would be for Merkel’s increasingly brittle government.
The chancellor’s position became more precarious on Sunday after Seehofer told leaders of his Christian Social Union in a closed-door meeting that the EU agreement reached last Friday wouldn’t reduce immigration to Germany, according to a party official, casting doubt over the future of the German government.
Seehofer had handed Merkel an ultimatum two weeks ago: Find a European deal that stops migrants with asylum applications in other EU countries from entering Germany or he would instruct police to start turning back such migrants at the border. Merkel had signaled that she would see such a move, which she opposes, as insubordination. Her Christian Democratic Union party backed her position on migration late Sunday.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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