Angela Merkel is fighting off yet another government crisis in Germany after a dramatic rift opened up within her coalition over an intelligence scandal.
The German chancellor will hold fresh emergency talks on Tuesday to keep her government together as her coalition partners warred over whether she should sack the country’s head of domestic intelligence.
The new row comes as fresh anti-migrant protests were planned on Sunday by the anti-Muslim PEGIDA organisation and a far-Right protester was jailed on Friday for five months for giving a Nazi salute during an earlier protest in the eastern German city of Chemnitz.
At the heart of the coalition row is Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the BfV, who shocked the country when he publicly contradicted Mrs Merkel over neo-Nazi protests in Chemnitz.
The chancellor’s main coalition partners, the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD), are demanding Mr Maassen be fired for what they say was a blatant attempt to interfere in politics.
But the intelligence chief is being shielded by Horst Seehofer, the controversial interior minister and leader of Mrs Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
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Anti-immigrant sentiment is on an upsurge in Germany, three years after Germany accepted over a million asylum seekers into the country during the refugee crisis.
Tensions are being stoked both on the streets and in government, as Germany’s largest opposition party, the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, have helped organise protests and condemned Mrs Merkel’s open-door refugee policy as being responsible for the unrest.
One more demonstration, organised by the anti-Islam movement PEGIDA among others, is scheduled in another eastern German town around 160 kilometres from Chemnitz, called Koethen, for afternoon.
Mrs Merkel may have hoped she had put the threat to her government behind her when she bested Mr Seehofer in a power struggle over migrant policy in the early summer, but she has returned from her holidays to the same dilemma. She cannot dismiss her rebellious intelligence chief without firing the interior minister as well.
But if Mr Seehofer is sacked there is a risk he will take his party out of the coalition.
Despite the scandal Mr Maassen is reportedly looking to double the size of his agency to nearly 6,000 employees to match the size of the BND foreign intelligence service, according to the Der Spiegel magazine.
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To add to Mrs Merkel’s troubles, many within the SPD are calling for the party to pull out of the coalition if it does not get its way over Mr Maassen — leaving Mrs Merkel with nowhere to turn.
The dispute centres on remarks Mr Maassen made in an interview to Bild newspaper in which he claimed there was no evidence to back media reports foreigners were “hunted” during the protests in Chemnitz — directly contradicting Mrs Merkel, who had condemned “hate on the streets”.
Mr Maassen claimed a widely distributed video of foreigners being attacked could have been forged. But summoned to parliament this week to explain his remarks, he admitted he had no evidence the video was fake and was only suggesting the possibility.
His remarks have been further undermined by leaked police reports from Chemnitz which describe 100 “hooded men” searching for foreigners, and an attack on a Jewish restaurant in the city.
Attention has also focused on meetings Mr Maassen held with leaders of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD), and allegations he passed confidential intelligence to the party.
It is no secret that Mrs Merkel would like to see the back of both Mr Maassen and her troublesome interior minister, but she was planning to wait until after the Bavarian elections to make a move.
All three coalition parties want to avoid a break-up of the government, not least because the polls suggest they would all suffer heavy losses in the event of a new election.
But emergency talks on Thursday ended without a breakthrough.
They are not set to resume until Tuesday because Mrs Merkel is hosting the Austrian chancellor on Monday, and she will be hoping the delay will allow time for heads to cool.