Angela Merkel faces ultimatum from ally over migrants

BERLIN: Hardliners of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc are poised to give the German leader an ultimatum to tighten asylum rules or risk pitching the country into a political crisis.

Three years after her decision to open Germany's borders to migrants fleeing war in Syria and Iraq and misery elsewhere, Merkel is still struggling to find a sustainable solution to end the grumbling from her Bavarian allies CSU over her liberal refugee policy.

Monday is "destiny day for Angela Merkel. For the government," wrote the mass-circulation newspaper Bild on Sunday.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of the



CSU has been one of the fiercest critics of Merkel's liberal stance that allowed a million asylum seekers into Germany since 2015.

The interior minister now wants to turn away at the border new arrivals who have previously been registered in another EU country -- often their first port of call, Italy or Greece.

But Merkel is firmly opposed, warning that it would leave countries at the EU's geographic southern periphery alone to deal with the migrant influx.

Instead, she wants to find a common European solution at the June 28-29 EU summit.