Faced with growing public discontent and dissent among the ranks of her own coalition government, Merkel seeks to achieve concrete results in stopping the irregular refugee flows to Europe.
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Germany’s opposition parties The Left and the Greens have called for the cancellation of Merkel’s planned visit to Istanbul on Sunday, arguing that it would give the perception of support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of the November. 1 polls.
Supporters of the AfD political party protest against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal policy towards taking in migrants and refugees on October 14, 2015 in Magdeburg, Germany.
“Stop the refugee chaos – save German culture + values – dethrone Merkel”, read a banner at the congress late Wednesday in the eastern state of Saxony, the home base for the anti-foreigner PEGIDA movement.
Many Germans have welcomed the influx.
Concerns are growing in Germany as more than 10,000 refugees continue to arrive every day.
Germany, a favoured destination for refugees fleeing war in the Middle East, expects a record 800,000 to a million asylum seekers to arrive this year.
Bild even asserted Merkel was losing the support of her loyal veteran Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and mused whether he could replace her.
With three state elections in March, the report said, “everyone in the party knows: Schaeuble is the only one who could replace Merkel”. The details of the bill included adding the west Balkan countries of Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo to the category of safe countries so that people from those lands can be turned back and replacing monetary payments with material goods with the aim of dissuading those suspected of coming for financial gain.
The CDU-run Interior Ministry has drawn up a draft bill that provides for the transit zones, which would hold refugees at border crossings so asylum requests can be examined before they are allowed in.
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Merkel has seen her popularity ratings slump to a four-year low and a few members of her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), want her to take a tougher line with comprehensive border controls.
