Europe should set a “generous” limit on the number of refugees it takes each year, Germany’s Interior Minister has said, in a sign of deepening divisions within the country over how to respond to the migrant crisis.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed on Wednesday to stick to her open-door refugee policy, defying criticism at home and overseas which has intensified due to growing fears about a potential security risk after the Islamist attacks in Paris. The rest of Europe, including Germany’s deficit-phobic brethren, had little choice but to go along. However, Europe now do no good in the refugee crisis.
“Europe must say that it can no longer accommodate so many migrants, it is not possible”, he said in extracts from a lunch with foreign media published by Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called on the Gulf states to accept more refugees fleeing Syria, saying that a “humanitarian disaster” could erupt in the Balkans if Europe does not control its borders.
Over the weekend, the German political divide on the issue was clearly on display at the party conference of Merkel’s coalition partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
But he signalled that Paris was taken by surprise by Merkel’s decision: “It was not France that said: Come!” Therefore, she advocate “legal quotas” for refugees who were “all over Europe to agree”. Some asylum-seekers may have crossed into the continent undetected.
“We won’t be able to get by without a military confrontation” with Islamic State “and other terrorist groups in Syria”, Steinmeier said.
For Merkel, Germany’s refugee influx, predicted to reach one million people this year, has become the biggest challenge of her chancellorship as she marked 10 years in office over the weekend. “It was not France that said ‘Come!”, the French prime minister said in an apparent reference to Germany’s decision to open its borders to refugees last September.
Hollande was in Moscow on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladamir Putin after a series of meetings with world leaders this week to create a new coalition against Islamic State. In particular, tensions have been simmering in recent weeks between Merkel’s CDU and its rally CSU.
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Mr Hollande has said he would like Germany to do more in the fight against the extremists. The chancellor promised a swift response to France’s request regarding the fight against the IS in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris.
