After hours of crisis talks that stretched late into Monday night Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, announced he would not be resigning from his post after having previously offered to do so.
Mr Seehofer, from the conservative Bavarian CSU party, had wanted a harsher policy on refugees and migrants, but Ms Merkel wants migration policy to be coordinated at an EU level.
The minister had threatened to unilaterally go ahead with his new policy of sending police to the German border to turn away refugees who had registered in other EU countries – effectively challenging Ms Merkel to sack him and bring down her own administration.
“After intensive discussions between the CDU and CSU we have reached an agreement on how we can in future prevent illegal immigration on the border between Germany and Austria,” Mr Seehofer told reporters as he left the the CDU's Berlin headquarters late on Monday.
The pair agreed a compromise policy of setting up so-called “transit centres” which would allow asylum seekers who had already registered in a different EU country to be sent back to it with the agreement of that country.
The Independent
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