German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday (10 June) she was more open to French President Emmanuel Macron's plans to reform migration and defence policy in Europe than his hopes to bolster the euro.
Merkel's handling of the migrant crisis - which saw more than 1.6 million people arrive in Germany, starting in 2014, and helped propel the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) into parliament - has come back to haunt her in the last few weeks.
"In our view, we need an "axis of the willing" in the fight against illegal migration," Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz said after meeting with Horst Seehofer, Germany's interior minister in Berlin.
Horst Seehofer abruptly called off a press conference scheduled to announce his new asylum policy as it emerged Mrs Merkel had blocked the plans.
The alleged rape and killing of a 14-year-old German girl by an Iraqi man, who was extradited from Iraq on Saturday, has re-ignited the debate on migrants and followed a scandal at a regional office which wrongly granted asylum applications.
A Bundestag session was interrupted for two hours on Thursday morning so that Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the CSU, to which Seehofer belongs, could hold separate emergency meetings.
He's now started to draw support for his ideas from Merkel's own party, as well as from other countries.
She wants a new deal at European Union level over migrants.
"We finished the meeting, really, everybody was happy, and I agreed to sign something", Trump told reporters at a news conference following his summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore. Eastern European EU countries also object to a proposal under which migrants would be resettled around the bloc under a quota system.
However, some other senior party members made clear they backed Seehofer.
She is reported to have told Seehofer and Bavaria's minister president, Markus Söder, she was prepared to compromise by striking bilateral agreements with the European Union countries most affected by new arrivals, including Italy and Greece, but it is understood they turned that idea down.
The ruling coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) has 399 seats, but without the CSU that would fall to 353 - less than a majority. Political observers say Merkel may rue the day she gave the nod to Seehofer's appointment as interior minister.
Adopting a name that is a chilling reminder of the 1940s Axis of Powers - the military alliance between Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy - the Eurosceptic leader said countries should "act on time" to avoid another refugee crisis similar to the one that hit Europe in 2015.
Seehofer also won support from Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who on Monday flatly refused to allow a rescue vessel carrying hundreds of migrants to dock.