Syrian refugees who have made it to Germany may be sent on to other European countries, the German Interior Ministry said on Tuesday, an apparent reversal of an earlier policy that suggested all asylum seekers from Syria would be allowed to stay.
Advertisement
But a spokesman for the Interior Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that Germany is now applying the Dublin procedure for all countries of origin and all member states at which migrants arrive – except Greece.
JOHANNESBURG -President Jacob Zuma and his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, have discussed the refugee crisis in Europe, with Zuma saying South Africa has dealt with similar issues in the past.
“Harsh weather conditions are likely to exacerbate the suffering of the thousands of refugees and migrants landing in Greece and travelling through the Balkans, and may result in further loss of life if adequate measures are not taken urgently”, UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler stressed on November 5.
Germany will have to increase public spending on direct aid to refugees by as much as 22.6 billion euros ($24 billion) for this year and next, though it will still run a budget surplus both years, Merkel’s council of economic advisers said in a report Wednesday.
In October, Tusk rebuked fellow European leaders by calling arguments over how to accommodate refugees “naive” as long as Europe fails to stop them surging over its borders.
That is to say that Germany went ahead and processed refugee applications for people who reached Germany after traveling across other European Union countries.
“I don’t know whether we are already at the stage where the avalanche has arrived in the valley below, or at the stage when it’s in the top third of the slope”, Schaeuble said during a panel discussion on Europe late Wednesday in Berlin. The economists urged Berlin to speed up the processing of asylum requests and to quickly integrate refugees in the labour market as Germany braces for up to one million arrivals this year.
Support for Merkel’s CDU-led party bloc rose 2 percentage points to 38 percent in a weekly poll, while the SPD gained 1 percentage point to 25 percent.
The decision was later denied by the government. “But our possibilities are also limited”, he said in an interview with ARD television.
Advertisement
Supporters of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) demonstrate against the German government’s policy for migrants in Berlin, Germany, on November 7, 2015.
