Excerpt:
Hardliners in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc on Monday gave her a two-week ultimatum to tighten asylum rules or risk pitching Germany into a political crisis that would rattle Europe, as US President Donald Trump poured fuel on the fire.
A defiant Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned that he would give Merkel a fortnight to find a European deal to curb new arrivals by a June 28-29 EU summit, failing which he vowed to order border police to turn back migrants.
Merkel immediately rejected the threat, saying there would be “no automatism” if no European deal was found, and warned Seehofer and his Bavarian CSU party that she is ultimately in charge of government policy.
A top CSU official, Markus Soeder, insisted: “For us it is clear there will be automatism” and added that the results of the EU summit would be reviewed by Seehofer.