Germany will be able to take in 500.000 refugees a year for a few years. While Jean Paul Juncker prepares to present the European plan to welcome refugees, which aims to absorb 160.000 migrants (against the 120.000 initially hypothesized) the vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the SPD, raises the possibility of reception in Germany: " I believe that we will certainly be able to deal with something like half a million refugees for several years", he explained in an interview with the public television Zdf, "I have no doubts about these, perhaps there will be more". "Greece and Italy alone cannot welcome all the refugees who arrive on the coasts”, added the chancellor Angela Merkel, reiterating in Berlin that binding quotas are needed.
However, Gabriel underlined that other EU countries must also take responsibility for part of the refugees arriving in Europe: "We cannot take almost a million people every year and integrate them as if nothing had happened in German society", he observed. Berlin, he assured, will continue to bear a "largely disproportionate" share because "it is undoubtedly an economically strong country" but "the European line must change" because it cannot be burdened only on countries such as Germany, Austria and Sweden.
In Greece, meanwhile, the wave of arrivals does not stop. To manage the increasingly critical situation on the island of Lesvos, where there are around 25000 migrants, the government and the UNHCR have asked for reinforcements. A migrant registration center has been set up in an abandoned football field and will operate 24 hours a day for the next five days. According to the Minister of Immigration, Yiannis Mouzalas, the island is "on the verge of explosion".
