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BERLIN – The leaders of the German coalition government tried to improve their alliance on Sunday by revising a week-long deal on the future of one of the country's top spies, which sparked an uproar.
The weekend deal is the latest attempt to chart a course of action in a series of disputes that have shaken Chancellor Angela Merkel's six-month coalition and raised concerns about its duration.
Under the new agreement, Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the country's national intelligence agency, will hold an advisory position in the Interior Ministry, coalition leaders said.
The decision revises an earlier agreement that would have seen Maassen, under public criticism, ignore his far-right protests, and leave his agency to hold the higher and better-paid MP position. Minister of the Interior.
The deal, struck last Tuesday, was initially a victory for the center-left SPD, a junior partner in Merkel's coalition, who demanded – and won – Maassen's departure. But the promotion to save the face of the security official triggered a brutal reaction among the party's roots, forcing the party president to go back on Friday and call for renegotiation of what she called a mistake .
Although a little obscure, the dispute comes less than three months after the coalition nearly gave in due to a technical disagreement over immigration policy, raising concerns about the political stability of Europe's largest economy.
The centrist alliance, which devotes much of its energy to managing internal crises, has had little time to govern and its results have fallen to the benefit of right and left populists.
An Emnid poll published in the German weekly Bild am Sonntag published Sunday showed that 67% of respondents no longer believed that the coalition could hold together.
"It's a very good signal that we took seriously the criticism of our decision and that we were able to correct it," said Sunday evening Andrea Nahles, president of the Social Democratic Party. "Overall, I think that with that, we laid the foundation for returning to substantive work."
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who had defended Maassen throughout the controversy, said the coalition had never been in danger and would now be able to focus fully on its political tasks.
But it was unclear whether the agreement would pacify the SPD base, a large number of which had called for the head of the intelligence services to be fired.
In his new role as "Special Adviser for European and International Affairs", he will address issues such as the return of refugees and agreements with African countries to limit immigration.
Write to Ruth Bender at [email protected] and Bertrand Benoit at [email protected]
