(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Chancellor Angela Merkel's plan to enlist other EU countries to take back migrants so that German borders can remain open must not come at the expense of the German taxpayer, a leading member of her conservatives' Bavarian sister party said yesterday.
'We are worried that Angela Merkel will start walking around Europe with a chequebook, Markus Ferber, a leading member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) told the RND media group. 'She needs Greece and Italy for a solution to the refugee question.
Merkel has accepted an end-of-June deadline set by her Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who heads the CSU to find a solution in conjunction with other EU countries on how to deal with illegal migration into and across the bloc.
Merkel, the EU's longest-serving leader has said her Christian Democrat (CDU) party would decide how to proceed after the two-week deadline elapsed.
Merkel once again insisted yesterday that Germany 'must be an open country in the face of Seehofer's threat to close the border to migrants who have already registered elsewhere in the European Union if she fails to find a solution at the EU level.
Speaking at an Amman university at the start of a two-day trip to Jordan and Lebanon, Merkel acknowledged that the influx of asylum-seekers into Germany over the last few years had caused anti-immigrant sentiment to rise in the country.
A report from the German Bundestag's committee for the interior presented to members yesterday found that the numbers of migrants deported from Germany have changed little over recent years, despite legal measures to facilitate removals.
Over the first four months of this year, there were 8,736 'forced repatriations, the report said.
Over the whole of 2017, there were 25,673 deportations, while the figure was in 26,654 in 2016, according to the report.
The report noted that many of those repatriated in 2016 were to Balkan countries, where the authorities were prepared to accept chartered flights carrying their citizens bearing special EU travel documents.
Repatriations to countries not accepting this procedure were incomparably more difficult, the report said.
Merkel is seeking bilateral deals that would see fellow member states take back migrants seeking to enter Germany on the basis of the so-called Dublin rule, which stipulates that refugees should be sent back to the first EU country where they registered an asylum bid.
At a press conference earlier this week, the German chancellor said that she would offer countries aid if they agreed to take back migrants in deals similar to Turkey's refugee agreement with the EU.
'EU law allows member states to find bilateral agreements on how to improve co-operation at the borders. We encourage, we urge, member states to co-operate among them[selves], EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said yesterday.
Under the EU's current asylum rules, member states can also conclude administrative arrangements to speed up the transfer of asylum-seekers to the member state responsible, Avramopoulos added.
The governments of Germany, Austria, Italy, France and other EU member states will convene in Brussels on Sunday for an extraordinary meeting on reforming the bloc's asylum rules.
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