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German minister hits out at refugee ‘failure’
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GERMANY’S transport minister hit out yesterday at the “complete failure” of the European Union to protect its external borders as he called for measures to halt the record number of migrants and refugees entering the country.
“Effective measures are necessary now to stop the influx. That includes help for countries from where refugees are fleeing and also includes an effective control of our own borders which also no longer works given the EU’s complete failure to protect its external borders,” Alexander Dobrindt said in a statement.
Dobrindt, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Bavarian allies CSU, also warned that the country “has reached its limit of capacity,” a day after 12,200 more refugees reached the southern German city of Munich — a key arrival point.
As Germany buckles under the strain of the record refugee influx expected to reach 800,000 this year, dissenting voices from the CSU have grown louder. Dobrindt’s statement came just days after CSU Vice President Hans-Peter Friedrich called Merkel’s decision “an unprecedented political error” that would have “catastrophic consequences.”
Germany is reinstating controls at its border with Austria as Europe’s top economy struggles to cope with the number of refugees, according to media reports.
Passport checks have been abolished for countries within Europe’s Schengen zone, but the decision to bring back controls was made to cope with a record influx of refugees, several German media reports said.
Austria’s state-owned rail operator also announced that all trains into Germany wold be halted from 1500 GMT without giving a reason.
Germany has become the destination of choice for migrants and refugees, particularly Syrians, after Merkel relaxed asylum rules for citizens of the war-torn country.
But with 450,000 arriving since the beginning of the year, infrastructure in Germany is stretched to the limit.
In an interview with German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, the interior minister said refugees given protection in Europe should accept that they will be distributed across the bloc.
“We can’t allow refugees to freely choose where they want to stay — that’s not the case anywhere in the world,” he said. “It also can’t be our duty to pay benefits laid out in German law to refugees who have been allocated to one EU country and then come to Germany anyway,” he added.
German EU Commissioner Guenter Oettinger told Welt am Sonntag newspaper that Germany should reduce benefits for asylum seekers to reduce the numbers coming across its borders
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