Friedrich Merz is racing to strike a migration deal with the Social Democrats ahead of a looming Easter deadline to form a government.

The incoming German chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has held several rounds of coalition talks with the SPD since he comfortably won last February’s elections – but they remain in deadlock over the vexed issue of migration.

On the campaign trail, the CDU vowed to take drastic action against mass migration including, turning away asylum seekers en masse at Germany’s land borders.

But CDU negotiators are facing pressure from the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD) to water down those measures, amid concerns that they would be a clear breach of EU migration law.

At the same time, Mr Merz is rumoured to be holding secret talks with Germany’s EU neighbours to coordinate his migration plan, which would require them to take back asylum seekers.

More security measures

To make matters more tense, Mr Merz is negotiating against the clock, having set himself a deadline of forming a government by Easter. European leaders, meanwhile, are desperate for the incoming chancellor join their united front against the aggression of Russia and the economic threat increasingly coming from the United States.

Germany under Mr Merz has already introduced historic reforms which unlock potentially unlimited defence spending for projects, before he has even sworn in a government. But EU leaders are eager to see even more security measures from him.

Sources in the Bundestag, the German parliament, have suggested to The Telegraph that he is likely to miss that deadline due to disagreements over migration, among other areas. They predicted he would instead secure a coalition deal in early May.

German political experts suspect the bold pledge to turn away asylum seekers on a large scale at all German borders will have to be watered down in order to get the negotiations with the SPD over the line.