German minister still optimistic about migrant deal with Italy
KEY ISSUE: Italy has become the main route into Europe for thousands of asylum-seekers
MUNICH: German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer on Saturday said he remained optimistic about completing a deal on migrants with Italy despite pushback from Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.
Salvini on Friday denied having reached a deal to take back migrants who had already applied for asylum in Italy, saying he wanted more concessions from Berlin.
Seehofer had announced on Thursday that he had secured an accord with Italy over the issue in line with similar deals negotiated with Greece and Spain.
“I’m sticking to what I said: We will get it done,” Seehofer said during a party congress of his Bavarian conservative party.
Seehofer’s push for tougher immigration policies nearly led to the collapse of the German coalition government earlier this year. Since then, Germany has pressed southern EU states to take back asylumseekers previously registered in these countries.
Salvini cautioned on Friday that he wasn’t ready to put his name to a deal with Germany, although he said German officials had assured him that they would accept a bona fide asylumseeker from Italy for every migrant that Germany returned to Italy.
He said he wanted “to see the availability and openness” of Germany on two other issues — a revision of both the EU’S Dublin Treaty on how Europe handles asylum requests, and of the EU’S Sophia naval mission which is patrolling the Mediterranean.
Seehofer did not address those issues in his remarks.
Italy has become the main route into Europe for hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers arriving by sea since the other main route from Turkey to Greece was largely shut in 2016. However, numbers have fallen sharply over the past 12 months.
Meanwhile, the embattled chief of Germany’s BFV domestic security agency wants to more than double his staff to 6,000 people by 2021, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday, citing sources at the interior ministry.
Hans-georg Maassen is facing calls to step down after he cast doubt on the authenticity of video footage showing far-right protesters chasing migrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz after the fatal stabbing of a German-cuban man.
Maassen, who has said his comments on Chemnitz were misunderstood, plans to expand his agency to match the size of the BND foreign intelligence service, which employs 6,500, Der Spiegel reported. The BFV currently has around 2,900 employees.
A spokesman for the interior ministry, which oversees the BFV agency, declined to comment on the Spiegel report, citing restrictions on public information about the agency.
Der Spiegel said Maassen planned to restructure the agency divisions responsible for counter-espionage, extremism and counter-sabotage to keep up with expanding threats.
Merkel is due to meet Seehofer and SPD leaders on Tuesday to discuss Maassen’s fate after failing to end the row on Thursday.
Seehofer’s push for tougher immigration policies nearly led to the collapse of the German coalition government earlier this year