Migrant crisis will decide Merkel's future

Angela Merkel has struck a truce with a key right-wing coalition partner unhappy about her stance on migration.

But the fact that there is another tricky meeting on Thursday emphasises that this is a reprieve not a final judgement.

The danger to Merkel from the refugee crisis may not be the stuff of front-page headlines in Britain, but it is real enough.

Some in Germany are seething at the seemingly limitless commitment the chancellor has made to take in anyone fleeing Syrian's civil war.

One German politician told me he was in a meeting where he watched British ministers panic over David Cameron's promise to take in 20,000 more refugees over the next five years.

"My country has to cope with that number every single week."

Even those who have no cultural qualms are worried about how the country will deal with the sheer number of new people.

Mutti has applied balm to the wound, and covered it with a sticking plaster. It is what mothers do.

Angela Merkel's nickname captures the sense of a leader of homely, sensible authority and comforting common sense.

The verb "to Merkel" - prevaricate - could soon have a whole new meaning: she who dares, wins. Perhaps.

The sticking plaster could soon peel off, leaving the wound merely less politically visible, although still publicly festering.

She has risked her reputation on a gamble that at first sight seems totally out of character - "reckless" is not a word you would normally apply to her 10 years in power.

One usually loyal German politician told me her decision to open Germany's borders to all refugees from Sudan and Syria was "madness".

He said a mayor in his area was phoning him almost nightly in tears.

Threat of revolt

The political crisis came about because the leader of the Bavarian Conservative party, a member of her coalition, was threatening to revolt.

The writ of Mrs Merkel's party, the Christian Democrats, does not run in Bavaria - they have their own Conservative party, the Christian Social Union.

Bavaria is funny like that. It even has its own embassy in Berlin, something the Edinburgh government has yet to achieve in London.

Anyway, the CSU is somewhat further to the right than the Christian Democrats, and its leader, the Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer, gave Mrs Merkel a series of ultimatums, the most serious being a limit to the number of migrants.

He didn't get that in an agreement struck last weekend. But the joint paper by the two parties won him some concessions.

It started with an assertion that manages the difficult trick of being both contentious and bland: "The people in Germany trust in our ability to cope with even the most difficult challenges."

The trusting people are then promised new "transit zones for speeded-up asylum procedures" - something Mrs Merkel's other partners, the Social Democrats, don't like at all.

There is also a two-year halt to reunifying refugee families and proposals for better co-operation with Austria - who Bavarians blame for not controlling the situation better.

Significant gamble

All this may have saved Mrs Merkel's political bacon.

It doesn't explain why she took this gamble in the first place.

(BBC)