Germany agrees deal aimed at limiting migrant numbers
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GERMANY moved to tighten its asylum laws to slow a record migrant influx as Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to bridge deep European rifts over the crisis in talks with Italy’s Matteo Renzi yesterday.
Late on Thursday, Merkel’s coalition government, after months of wrangling, hammered out a deal to limit numbers by blocking some migrant family reunifications and declaring three North African nations “safe countries of origin.”
The deal means citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia will have little chance of gaining political asylum, echoing steps Germany took for several Balkans countries last year.
Germany will also block family reunifications for two years for rejected asylum seekers who can’t be deported because they face the threat of torture or the death penalty in their own country.
Merkel’s cabinet should sign off on the measures next week before parliament passes them into law, said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.
After a decade in power, Merkel has come under fierce pressure to reverse her open-arms migrant policy, with emotions heightened after a rash of sex assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve police blamed on North Africans.
Merkel has seen her long-stellar poll ratings slide ahead of three state elections in March. A poll published yesterday by news weekly Focus found that 40 percent of respondents want Merkel to resign.
Across Europe, debate has raged on how to handle the biggest migrant wave since World War II, with Sweden and Finland announcing plans to deport tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers.
Several east European countries have sealed their borders, and Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban yesterday reiterated that “migration is a security issue,” linking it to “the threat of terrorism and crime.”
Bulgarian Prime Minister Bokyo Borisov has demanded the closure of the external borders of the passport-free Schengen area, arguing that rather than spend money on migrants, Europe should stop them from coming.
In Germany, the inflow has fallen from thousands to hundreds a day in recent weeks as winter sets in.
“Our goal must be for refugees numbers not to rise again after the end of the winter storms but for them to keep going down,” said Merkel’s migrant policy coordinator Peter Altmaier.
The Italian leader has in recent months frequently criticized Berlin and Brussels over migrant policies and pushed a more assertive role for his country. “We are doing our part by rescuing, almost every day, children from capsized boats in the Mediterranean,” he said in comments published on Thursday.
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