A year ago about one million refugees entered Germany, with many escaping violence and persecution in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean sea.
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This year it expects up to 300,000 more people to arrive, acording to the Federal Office for Migrants and Refugees (BAMF).
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said that while Europe and the United States still disagree over parts of the potential free trade deal, commonly known as TTIP, the talks aren’t over yet.
While Merkel’s poll ratings and support for the Christian Democratic Union have slumped amid the refugee crisis, her bloc still leads the Social Democrats by as many as 13 percentage points in national polls.
“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”.
“A lot of what was going badly in the beginning we’ve eventually managed to do pretty well”.
Merkel´s decision last September to open the doors to asylum seekers was seen in many European nations, notably those in the east, as an invitation for further mass migration.
“We’ll present the exact number soon but it’s certain that less than one million people came to Germany a year ago”, Frank-Juergen Weise told Bild am Sonntag newspaper in comments published on Sunday.
He added that if more people were to come, his office would come under pressure but suggested he was not anxious about such a scenario, saying it was instead likely that fewer than 300,000 would come this year.
Merkel faces regional elections this weekend and a general election next year, with a new poll indicating that half of Germans do not want her to seek a fourth term. The survey of 501 voters, conducted August 25 by the research firm TNS Emnid, had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
In an interview yesterday, Mrs Merkel declined to be drawn on whether she would run again, or even when she might announce her intention to stand again.
Just over a year before the next federal election, Merkel fielded questions in a television interview on eastern Europe’s reluctance to accept Muslim refugees, relations with Turkey, sanctions against Russian Federation and the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.
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Yet according to a recent Oxfam report, most western countries, including Germany, have taken in a very small percentage of asylum seekers that exist, with many more seeking shelter in poor countries such as Turkey and Lebanon.
