Please direct your complaints to my colleague
NOMINALLY they are allies. But Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and Horst Seehofer, the premier of Bavaria and boss of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), have been at loggerheads for months over the refugee crisis. Mr Seehofer demands fixed “upper limits” on the number of migrants that Germany admits. Mrs Merkel, given the 1.1m refugees who arrived in 2015, agrees that a “reduction” is desirable but rules out limits as unconstitutional. At an annual CSU gathering on January 6th-8th, Mr Seehofer expanded his attack. With Mrs Merkel present as an uncomfortable guest, he put a low-ball number on his “limit”: no more than 200,000 a year.
The refugee crisis strains not only Germany’s governing coalition (which also includes the centre-left Social Democrats) but also the “Union”, as the CDU and CSU are jointly called because they form one group in parliament. Yet their fight must be seen in context. The CSU has always been prone to elaborate displays of dissent—without which it would have no reason to exist as a separate party from the CDU.
Après Charlie
Start with the setting. The latest showdown took place at Wildbad Kreuth, a historic former spa near an Alpine lake where guests once included emperors and tsars. Every winter for four decades the CSU’s members of parliament have gathered there against a picture-perfect Bavarian backdrop. One meeting in 1976 took place amid a power struggle between two swaggering silverbacks, the CSU’s Franz Josef Strauss and the CDU’s Helmut Kohl. It was in Kreuth that Mr Strauss declared war, when the CSU formally abandoned its partnership with the Christian Democrats. The split was mended only a month later—but with appropriate utterances from both sides about the CSU’s prized autonomy.
Ever since, the CSU’s attitude towards its sister party has been described as “the spirit of Kreuth”. The party thus has three jobs. The first is to rule Bavaria, which it does competently. The second is to ensure, as Mr Strauss put it, that “there must never be a legitimate democratic party to the right of the CSU”: the party must be populist enough to appeal to conservative voters and keep them from drifting to the extreme right. The third job is to make enough trouble in national politics, especially for the CDU, for Bavarians to feel important—but without actually toppling a Christian Democrat chancellor (without whom the CSU would also be powerless).
By this definition, as of last summer Mr Seehofer was looking weak. The CSU appeared irrelevant in the governing coalition, and was widely ridiculed for both its signature policies. (One is to subsidise parents who keep their toddlers at home rather than sending them to a crèche. The other is to introduce a road toll which, cunningly, would hit only foreign drivers.) Meanwhile, a new xenophobic party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), was growing to the right of the CSU, making Mr Strauss turn in his grave.
The refugee crisis has allowed Mr Seehofer to tap into the spirit of Kreuth again. Since September he has been needling Mrs Merkel for her liberal asylum policy. That does not mean he wants to oust her. He only wants to signal to Bavarians that the CSU remains the conservative backstop inside the Union. This also applies when the topic is Brussels. In terms of Euroscepticism, the “Bavarians are the Brits of Germany”, as one analyst puts it. To get that message out, Mr Seehofer also invited David Cameron to attend this year’s meeting at the spa in Kreuth. All in the spirit.