“One can not manage that alone, Greece can not do it alone”, Merkel told a joint news conference with Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipila in Berlin.
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BAD STAFFELSTEIN, Germany Hungarian leader Viktor Orban said on Wednesday he would propose that European Union states pay more into the EU budget to help cope with the refugee crisis and that Greece should allow other countries to defend its borders to slow the influx.
Schulz also announced that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hollande will jointly address the European Parliament in Strasbourg on October. 7.
Her initially slow reaction to the refugee crisis over the summer is a case in point.
Merkel said the European Union should focus on the root causes of displacement, show solidarity with the countries most affected, strengthen external borders and take action against people smugglers. The SPD chairman is a potential candidate for the chancellorship in the next election in 2017.
However, she also stressed that Europe needs not only a selective redistribution, but rather a permanent process for a fair distribution of refugees. She spoke of the “endless number of tragedies” and “inconceivable atrocities”, and took a clear, zero-tolerance stance against xenophobia. And she now has to deal with the ensuing scandal of Volkswagen AG – Europe’s biggest automaker – cheating when it comes to emissions control testing procedures in the United States.
Yet, Angela Merkel is under pressure.
Pointing to recent talks between Germany and Turkey on the crisis, she added: “EU President Donald Tusk visited Turkey, I have talked to President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, had a telephone conversation with the Turkish prime minister“.
Only last month Merkel’s government declared Germany’s border open to all Syrians, prompting a rush of migrants which overwhelmed the nations police and exhausted all available places for asylum seekers to stay.
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Hungary built a fence at its border with Serbia and is extending it to the border with Croatia to prevent migrants from entering. It remains to be seen whether a European solution can be found.
