German chancellor Angela Merkel has summoned her new grand coalition cabinet to a two-day retreat at a baroque castle outside Berlin in a bid to end the bad-tempered sniping that has overshadowed her fourth term so far.
A month after promising to get down to work after a six-month interregnum, the chancellor has a restless coalition partner who accuses ministers from her own Christian Democrat (CDU) alliance of being more interested in building their political profile than tackling their portfolio.
The focus of their ire: federal health minister Jens Spahn and interior minister Horst Seehofer, whose shared love of deliberately controversial soundbites has given the duo the nickname Spahnhofer.
Mr Spahn, a 37-year-old who sees himself as possible Merkel successor, first raised hackles by suggesting Germany’s €416 a month basic welfare payment was adequate. Then he accused pro-choice campaigners of caring “more for animal rights than human rights”. Most recently he warned of how, in some German cities’ multicultural districts, there is an “impression that the state is no longer willing or able to enforce the law”.
After the last remark, Dr Merkel’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) coalition partner asked her to ensure Mr Spahn “gets on with his own job”.
“Employees who make big speeches but don’t do their job annoy their colleagues and in real life get into trouble with the boss,” said Andrea Nahles, SPD parliamentary leader, ordering the chancellor to “get government business up and running”.
‘Policy of arrogance’
Given the law-and-order interior ministry has been in conservative hands for 13 years, Ms Nahles added, any shortcomings in this field are the failings of Dr Merkel and her allies.
Like Mr Spahn, Germany’s new interior minister Horst Seehofer is a man in a hurry – but for a different reason. His Christian Social Union (CSU) face crucial state elections in Bavaria next September. After a disastrous federal election result last autumn, the 67-year-old has just five months now to boost the CSU’s law-and-order profile and win back voters.
With that in mind, Mr Seehofer has ordered a tighter approach to migration, to furious SPD protest, and said he was “pleased” by Viktor Orban’s re-election in Hungary. In contrast to Dr Merkel’s tight-lipped congratulations on Monday, Mr Seehofer attacked as “wrong” the EU’s “policy of arrogance and paternalism with respect to other member states”.
His greatest attention-getter so far, however, was to reheat the polemic that “Islam doesn’t belong to Germany”.
While Mr Seehofer’s press team struggled to split hairs between Islam and the four million Muslims living in Germany, Merkel said in her first Bundestag address that German Muslims “belong to Germany in the same way as their religion, that is to say Islam, belongs to Germany”.
Shift to right
What unites Mr Spahn and Mr Seehofer is a wish to tackle the far-right Alternative für Deutschland by shifting the CDU/CSU to the right. With that in mind their allies have agreed a “conservative manifesto” demanding Dr Merkel back faster deportations, the end of dual citizenship and reintroduce compulsory military service.
Unless she corrects her centrist CDU push and embraces touchstone conservative policies, they argue, Dr Merkel will lose German right-wing voters forever to the AfD. In a possible taste of things to come, meanwhile, the Spahnhofer duo have cosied up to Austria’s new conservative chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who shares power in Vienna with the far-right.
Dr Merkel hopes the sun and fresh Brandenburg air around Meseberg Palace, the federal government guest house, will resolve tensions and prove her fourth marriage of political convenience is up to the job. But a poll out this week, showing just one in three Germans agree, means two days in the country may not suffice.
