Merkel failed to fully resolve the differences at a Sunday meeting but party officials held out hope of an agreement after a series of meetings scheduled to be held later on Thursday.
Advertisement
German Chancellor Angela Merkel explained the procedure would be to arrange for three to five refugee reception centers countrywide to expedite deportations so that the refugees could be accepted or sent back to their country of origin.
The issue of transit zones – pushed by the Bavarian prime minister and the harshest internal critic of Merkel’s open-doors policy, CSU leader Horst Seehofer – became a central point of disagreement between the SPD, the conservative CSU, and Merkel’s centre-right CDU party.
German authorities expect to receive at least 800,000 asylum seekers by the end of this year.
Daily newspaper Bild said SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel expected a deal on Thursday.
The government faces strong pressure to limit the influx of refugees into the country.
BAMF says that in August a few 55,600 Syrians requested asylum in the country, with 38,650 now holding legal refugee status.
“I think it’s relatively silly that we’re arguing about a problem that affects 2.4 percent of incoming refugees”, Gabriel said. Germany registered 181,000 arrivals in October alone.
It was revealed Thursday that the European Union has relocated only 116 migrants more than a month after the start of a plan to distribute 160,000 asylum-seekers throughout the continent. This will help lighten the domestic discord as she pursues regional solutions to Europe’s refugee crisis with countries such as Turkey.
“We need cooperation with the country from which the refugees are embarking so we can organize border protection jointly”, she told an audience of industrialists in Dusseldorf Wednesday night.
The matter was discussed for weeks between junior coalition partners and Merkel’s Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats.
It is collecting enough taxes and has public debt under control, he said.
Advertisement
“Only by working together in close cooperation can the federal and state governments meet the challenge of the high number of refugees”, Olaf Scholz, the mayor of Hamburg, said.
