The EU has been struggling to cope with migrant arrivals in recent months.
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France’s Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and his British counterpart Theresa May say they will sign a deal there on Thursday to strengthen their countries’ co-operation on security, the fight against criminal smugglers, human traffickers, and clandestine immigration.
In the first six months of the year, Germany saw 150 arson or other attacks that damaged or destroyed refugee shelters, nearly as many as in the whole of last year.
The UN’s refugee chief warned on Tuesday that Germany and Sweden cannot be left to bear most of Europe’s asylum burden, as German media reported that the number seeking refuge in the country could surge to 750,000 this year. “In the long term, it is not sustainable for only two EU countries-Germany and Sweden-to take in the majority of refugees with efficient asylum structures”.
The government in Berlin had earlier forecast that 450,000 asylum seekers could arrive in 2015, but is now set to increase that to 650,000 or higher.
In the past week alone, 21,000 migrants have arrived in Greece, according to the United Nations.
New official figures are due to be published on Wednesday, and if that projection is confirmed, it would be a record and far more than the previous high in 1992, when Germany opened its doors to refugees fleeing the Balkans wars.
Handelsblatt reports that Germany’s 16 regional states have reported a spike in the number of asylum seekers over the summer.
Following rising numbers of asylum applications from eastern European countries including Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Serbia, Merkel also called for the European Union to establish a list of safe countries of origin, where citizens are not generally under threat of violence or persecution.
Asylum seekers arriving in Sweden. The head of the federal jobs agency has called for more funding from the German government to speed up migrants’ integration into the nation’s workforce. And thousands in towns and cities nearby have been holding demonstrations to protest the housing of asylum seekers in their areas, a trend they have referred to as the “Islamization of the West”.
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The UK is exempt from the agreement.
