Angela Merkel’s main ally from Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, sought reconciliation with the chancellor Tuesday as a guest at her party congress, vowing unity on the refugee issue that threatened to drive a wedge between them.
Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and Seehofer’s Christian Social Union (CSU) jointly constitute the conservative bloc that leads Germany’s coalition government, where the Social Democrats are junior partners.
But the Bavarians’ furious answer to Merkel’s decision in September to open the boundaries to refugees that were Syrian led Seehofer to chastise chancellor at her traditional guest appearance at the CSU congress in Munich last month. The expectation was that he’d be combative in his return appearance at the CDU congress this week in Karlsruhe, western Germany.
Instead, the eminent 66-year-old Bavarian prime minister offered words and praise of compromise.
“We have a superb chancellor,” Seehofer told the CDU faithful in a speech than ran 20 minutes over the scheduled half hour.
“We will reduce the number of refugees clearly,” Merkel had told the congress a day earlier, in a formula that got the hardliners in her very own party to drop demands for fixed upper limits — Obergrenzen in German — to the number of refugees.
“Our followers expect us to solve the refugee catastrophe collectively,” answered Seehofer, to small applause in the conference center.
One CDU delegate from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Notburga Kunert, welcomed the Bavarian prime minister’s speech, saying: “It feels like the two sister parties are coming closer to each other again. And that’s significant, because Germany’s towns and villages are reaching the limit of their ability when it comes to coping with the refugee catastrophe.”
Other delegates suggested this might have affected Merkel’s decision to locate a compromise, and implied that Seehofer had been correct to chide their chancellor back in November.
“The manner Seehofer did it lacked good manners, but his criticism was appropriate,” said Nicolas Soetter, a part of the CDU’s more conservative youth wing Junge Union from the state of Schleswig Holstein.