EU seeks consensus, Merkel’s fate at stake

BRUSSELS: European leaders gathered in Brussels on Sunday for an informal meeting aimed at paving the way to a deal on the management of migration, amid an escalating crisis that threatens to unravel the bloc’s passport-free travel area and dissolve Germany’s governing coalition.

“This is not about the survival of a chancellor,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said. “It’s about finding a solution, and I hope a common one, for a migration and asylum policy in Europe.”

Participating leaders arrived with different priorities: frontier countries including Italy seek more assistance from their peers with border protection and a more equitable allocation of refugees between the bloc’s member states. Northern countries, including Germany, want to limit “secondary movements” of protection-seekers from the south, where they initially apply for asylum, to the more affluent states of the European core.

With the bloc’s 28 nations at loggerheads over the overhaul of rules that assign responsibility for asylum-seekers to the countries of first arrival but are not enforced, the prospects for an EU-wide agreement are slim, officials said. Germany will instead seek a patchwork of bilateral deals with frontier states, which would limit secondary movements in return for financial support and yet unspecified other concessions.