Merkel agrees to cap migrants in bid to form a new coalition
ANGELA Merkel has agreed to replace her ‘open-door’ migration policy with a hard-line limit on the number of refugees allowed into Germany as part of a last-ditch attempt to save her career.
The German Chancellor reached a deal to cap the number of migrants given asylum every year at between 180,000 and 220,000, as she took a significant step towards forming a coalition government after months of stalemate.
There will also be a limit of 1,000 relatives a month allowed to join registered migrants from countries such as Syria.
The provisional agreement between Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats will come as a huge relief to the Chancellor.
But the introduction of strict controls on migration is a significant U-turn after her ‘refugees welcome’ policy heralded the arrival of more than one million people between 2015 and 201 .
The cap will be seen as a key concession to Mrs Merkel’s Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union, which faced significant losses to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany in the September election.
While the number of arrivals has dropped since the migration crisis, government figures show 408,147 asylum decisions were made in Germany in the first six months of last year.
Mrs Merkel welcomed the deal as a ‘new dawn’, saying both sides had to ‘give and take’ to keep the talks alive.