By threatening to implement his plan even without Merkel’s approval, he risks forcing the veteran chancellor to fire him — a move that would likely bring down the government and mean the end of both their careers.
It would probably also spell the end of a decades-long alliance between Seehofer’s Christian Social Union (CSU), which campaigns only in Bavaria, and Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which runs for elections in the rest of Germany. [...]
Seehofer has made no bones about where his loyalties lie, even after bowing to party pressure to give up the state premiership. At a CSU convention in Nuremberg last December, he quoted Franz Josef Strauß, his legendary predecessor, saying “Bavaria is our home, Germany our fatherland and Europe our future.” But he also made a key clarification: “For us, Bavaria will always be first.” [...]
Polls suggest the CSU could lose its absolute majority in the state parliament in a replay of its general election disaster from last September, when Merkel’s conservative bloc suffered its worst result since 1949 and hemorrhaged votes to the AfD.
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