Almost half of Germans want Merkel to resign as Italy warns survival of EU is at stake over migration crisis

Almost half of Germans want Angela Merkel to resign as their country’s leader, a new poll has shown, as the German chancellor comes under renewed pressure over her handling of the immigration issue.

A YouGov survey showed that 43 per cent of Germans now want her to leave office, compared with 42 per cent who want her to remain - 15 per cent did not express an opinion.

Even in her own CDU-CSU coalition, 27 per cent want to see her quit.

The survey demonstrates Mrs Merkel’s increasingly perilous position as she fights an internal battle with her coalition partner, the Bavarian CSU, over imposing border controls that Mrs Merkel believes risk undermining the Schengen free movement zone.

Mrs Merkel will attend an emergency summit in Brussels on Sunday in a bid to try and create a “European solution” to the migration crisis which has exposed deep divisions in the bloc over how to hand African and Middle Eastern migration.

No breakthrough is expected at the summit, where Italy is demanding Europe reform the Dublin asylum rules and share the burden of Mediterranean migration, while eastern states like Hungary and Poland resolutely refuse to accept migrant quotas.

The summit comes as Italy’s new populist government continues to ratchet up the pressure on the rest of Europe by refusing to allow NGO ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at Italian ports.

Italy warned that the survival of the EU was at stake yesterday as it signalled it would block another ship, the  Dutch-registered MV Lifeline, which is carrying 224 asylum seekers rescued off the coast of Libya this week.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s hardline interior minister and the head of The League party, said the ship was in Maltese waters and should head for a Maltese port, where it should be impounded and its crew arrested for allegedly aiding “clandestine migration”.

"We cannot take in one more person," Mr Salvini, who wants to expel half a million unauthorised migrants from Italy, told the German weekly Der Spiegel. "On the contrary: we want to send away a few."

Just two days before an EU mini-summit on the migrant issue in Brussels, Mr Salvini, who is also deputy minister, warned that the very future of the bloc was at stake.

"Within a year it will be decided whether there will still be a united Europe or not," he told Der Spiegel.

As the EU prepares for budget talks and next year’s European Parliament elections, it would become clear "whether the whole thing has become meaningless", he said.

"Italian ports are no longer at the disposal of traffickers. Open the Maltese ports! Open the French ports," Mr Salvini said on a visit to Siena, Tuscany, to bolster League candidates ahead of a local election on Sunday.

On Thursday he pledged that "foreign NGO boats will never touch Italian soil again."

Last week he closed Italian ports to another NGO ship, the Aquarius, which eventually disembarked 630 migrants and refugees in the Spanish port of Valencia after permission was given by Madrid.

“The lawless ship Lifeline is now in Maltese waters with its load of migrants. For the safety of its crew and passengers we have asked Malta to open its ports. It is clear that the ship should then be seized and its crew arrested,” Mr Salvini tweeted on Friday.

But the Dutch said the ship was not their responsibility because it is operated by a German NGO, Mission Lifeline.

Danilo Toninelli, the Italian transport minister, also fired a broadside against the NGO vessel, claiming it was operating “outside international law."  

“The nearest safe port is Valletta. We’re talking about a 32-metre-long ship that can transport 50 people at most, yet they have 224 on board.”

Mission Lifeline denied that it was operating outside the law, saying its ship was the closest to the imperiled migrants, who travel on rubber dinghies that are often at risk of sinking.

The charity said the migrants had been rescued “in line with international law” and called for its ship to be allowed to proceed to a “port of safety”.

Meanwhile, Brussels called on the rest of the EU to help frontline states such as Italy and Greece.

"I think that the whole of Europe must show solidarity towards those who are most affected, the Greeks, Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain, to ease their burden and to reimburse and honour a part of their costs and efforts," said European Commissioner Guenther Oettinger.