MERKEL FACES REVOLT OVER MIGRANTS
PARTY REBELS WANT GERMAN BORDERS CLOSED IN LIGHT OF COLOGNE ATTACKS
BERLIN • Angela Merkel is facing a fresh rebellion over her refugee policy, with more than 40 politicians from her Christian Democrat party reportedly signing a petition to close Germany’s borders to asylum seekers.
The rebels plan to call for a vote on the proposal at the next party meeting on Jan. 26.
The German chancellor has come under intense pressure to change her “open-door” refugee policy since it emerged that asylum seekers were among the suspects in the New Year’s Eve sex attacks in Cologne.
More than 650 women have now come forward to file criminal complaints over the attacks, about 45 per cent of them for sexual assault.
“If so many of our party speak out in favour of partial refusal at the border, we should all be able to vote on it,” Christian von Stetten, one of the MPs behind the move, told Bild newspaper.
The MPs’ petition calls for the border to be closed to asylum seekers “who wish to enter Germany il- legally via a safe third country.” In practice this would include almost all asylum seekers, as under the EU’s Dublin rules refugees must claim asylum in the first member state they reach.
Germany is already turning away hundreds of migrants a day at its border with Austria under the rules because they want to travel through the country to claim asylum in Denmark or Sweden. But thousands more who say they want to claim asylum in Germany are still allowed to enter despite crossing through other EU member states.
Merkel appeared to have fought off a rebellion with a triumphant speech at her party conference last month, in which she cast her decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees as a temporary measure and pledged to reduce the numbers significantly.
But the Cologne attacks have reopened the debate and left her looking more isolated than ever.
Peter Tauber, the party’s general secretary, admitted Wednesday the mood in the party was “tense.”
He called for Germany’s states to deport 1,000 rej ected asylum seekers a day. His call came after it emerged that some of the suspects in the Cologne attacks were migrants whose asylum claims had been rejected, but had remained in Germany.
Currently, the German authorities reject around 50 per cent of the 2,000 asylum claims they process each day. But the number who are actually deported is far lower.