German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s allies in Bavaria stepped up criticism of her open-door refugee policy on Sunday (3 January), with their leader demanding a cap of 200,000 migrants a year, about a fifth of last year’s level.
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German public support to Merkel has been weakening in recent months, after a string of terrorist attacks on civilians in July.
Mr Gabriel also criticised Merkel’s catchphrase “Wir schaffen das”, meaning “We can do this”, which she adopted during the migrant crisis last summer and has repeatedly used since.
“I, we always said that it’s inconceivable for Germany to take in a million people every year”, Gabriel said in extracts of an interview with broadcaster ZDF released on Saturday.
In a television interview on Sunday, Merkel said “much had been achieved” in overcoming the refugee crisis, but there remained “lots still to do”.
But she reiterated her stance that blocking refugees based on their religion was misguided.
“What I continue to think is wrong is that some say “we generally don’t want Muslims in our country, regardless of whether there’s a humanitarian need or not”. “We’re going to have to keep discussing that”.
This has raised opposition to Merkel’s open-door migrant policy, which allowed hundreds of thousands from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere into Germany previous year.
That move prompted a further wave of migration through the Balkans that culminated in the daily arrival of more than 10,000 asylum seekers at German borders at one point.
Meanwhile Germany’s head of migration said the country took fewer than the previously stated 1.1 million refugees in 2015.
“We’re preparing for 250,000 to 300,000 refugees this year”, he said.
The influx prompted countries such as Hungary to sharply criticize Merkel and even accuse her of threatening Europe’s stability.
Brussels must not give Britain too good a deal or the European Union would go “down the drain”, Germany’s vice-chancellor said yesterday.
Merkel has not yet said if she will run, with an announcement possible at her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party congress in December.
In an interview newspaper Passauer Neue Presse Tuesday, Merkel said that “We expect those with a Turkish background who have lived in Germany for a long time to develop a high degree of loyalty to our country”.
Turkey is hosting some 3 million refugees, including more than 2.7 million Syrians.
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These included hiring thousands more officials to work in the country’s refugee agency, speeding up the deportation of migrants denied asylum, and introducing tough new rules to encourage refugees to learn German and attend integration courses.
