The regional sister party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) has shown little willingness to compromise on the key coalition issue of family reunions for refugees, saying they should be granted only in special circumstances.
Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) has joined Merkel's CDU in courting the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) for a renewed grand coalition in order to fend off fresh elections in Germany.
The SPD has named family reunions for refugees as a key demand ahead of exploratory talks.
The CSU's Joachim Herrmann, interior minister in the state of Bavaria, refused to allow those with so-called "subsidiary protection" to bring family members to Germany and said the party would only agree to exceptions in "certain hardship cases."
In comments to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Herrmann repeated his party's call for an annual cap of 200,000 on the number of asylum seekers entering the country - a demand at odds with the SPD's stance on migration.
Armin Laschet, the CDU premier of North Rhine Westphalia, had previously appealed to his CDU-CSU colleagues to show greater readiness to compromise. Laschet said family reunions should be available to those with jobs and flats, and not just in exceptional humanitarian cases.
Laschet referenced a ruling by a Berlin court that a severely traumatized 16-year-old from Syria should be allowed to bring his parents and siblings to Germany despite only having been awarded subsidiary - or partial - refugee status.
