Critics say her accommodating message in August that “we can do this” – responding to wrenching scenes of refugees faced with border closures and popular hostility in trying to enter a few European Union states – have spurred migrants to pour into Germany in ever larger numbers, overwhelming the resources of local authorities.
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“My concern is that Isis have actually said that they will use the migrant wave to flood Europe with half a million of their jihadi fighters”, he said in a radio interview, “Now even if that’s wrong, even it its only 5,000 – even if it’s only 500 – I am very anxious about that”.
France, which blamed the Sunni insurgency for Friday’s attacks, faces an especially hard task because its security services have been suffering from what they describe as a relative blindness in the region since Paris stopped cooperating with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
German officials indicated that Merkel saw no reason to revise her stance on refugees in the wake of the Paris attacks.
“And France is known for having extremists”.
Most of the refugees, though, have had their sights set on Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, where governments provide more aid and support for the transition to new lives. The German leader issued a statement saying her thoughts were with the victims “of the apparent terrorist attack”. Merkel has said she can’t just flip a switch to stop the flow, and even that it is “not in our power how many come to Germany”.
“The people in Paris are enduring a nightmare of violence, terror and fear”, Merkel said in Berlin.
Returning migrants to their first point of official registered entry would help achieve fair distribution in Europe, Merkel said.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called a meeting of his security council in Madrid. Terrorism struck the Spanish capital in 2004, when 191 people were killed by suicide bombers who detonated explosives in backpacks as trains headed into Atocha station.
But Montenegro’s Interior Ministry was told by German police that the case is being treated “as isolated and without any links to terrorism”, said ministry spokesman Tamara Popovic. “We are not in a war between religions but in a fight between civilization and brutality”. Earlier, conservative opposition leader and former president Nicolas Sarkozy also put the accent on tight security.
“France, because it was freely, cowardly attacked, will be merciless against the terrorists”, Mr. Hollande said in a televised address.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere as well as Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned against anti-migrant sentiments following the Paris attacks.
“The one responsible for the attacks in Paris… he is a criminal and not a refugee and not an asylum seeker”, he said speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the summit.
Mr Lewin of the Henry Jackson Society, warned that unless liberal governments were more open about confronting the threat posed by militant Islam to European societies, they risked losing the argument to the real hardliners.
The ongoing refugee crisis has overwhelmed Merkel.
“There are of course ticking bombs coming in with the refugees”, said the 49-year-old, who worked as a private teacher of computer science in Abu Dhabi before coming to Germany last month.
“The Paris attacks have changed everything”, tweeted Markus Soeder, Bavarian state finance minister and, like Seehofer, a member of Merkel’s sister party, the Christian Social Union.
“I would invite those in Europe who try to change the migration agenda we have adopted – I would like to remind them to be serious about this and not to give in to these basic reactions that I do not like”, Juncker said.
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De Maiziere, a longtime Merkel confidant, pushed back. “I’d like to appeal urgently that no one rush to make a connection with the refugee situation”, he told reporters in Berlin.
