Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) held a meeting with their Bavarian sister party, Seehofer’s Christian Social Union (CSU), in an effort to bury the hatchet after Seehofer attacked Merkel’s policy on Europe’s refugee crisis. “That’s why I’m looking at it the other way around”.
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Backing from the umbrella organization for companies that are among Europe’s biggest exporters strengthens Merkel’s hand as she refuses to bow to demands to close the border or place a cap on the number of refugees Germany will accept. BDI support for Merkel’s stance against Russian Federation past year after it seized Crimea proved decisive in swinging Germany and ultimately Europe behind sanctions, even at the cost to German exports.
Coming into this weekend, the chancellor wanted to reestablish unity within her right-of-center camp, and differentiate it from the Social Democrats (SPD) on migration.
“I think it’s relatively silly that we’re arguing about a problem that affects 2.4 percent of incoming refugees”, Gabriel said.
But whatever the political term of art, it won’t be pretty when Germany starts building border facilities to process the thousands of asylum seekers streaming into the country every day.
Under the agreement, 50 migrants an hour could cross into Bavaria at the five agreed points, according to Thomas Kreuzer, chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU) parliamentary group, the state’s ruling party.
While most Germans initially backed Ms Merkel’s open-doors policy for those fleeing war and persecution, a growing backlash has piled pressure on the chancellor and exposed rifts within her conservative bloc.
He added that if Germany and Austria limit the number of migrants arriving at their borders, Slovenia would have to act because it would face “an uncontrollable number of migrants”.
If Germany closed its borders other countries would immediately follow suit along the asylum-seekers’ route across Europe, she told party activists.
As only very few of the new arrivals come from Balkan countries that are deemed safe, transit zones to filter out such economic migrants directly at the German border would have only a very limited impact on the total numbers, Gabriel said.
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Security police chief Antti Pelttari says the threat of a terror attack is still “low” in the country of 5.5million but that the agency has a watch-list of 300 people with suspected Islamist extremists.
