Angela Merkel overcomes the hurdle of migrants. The German chancellor and the CSU leader have reached agreement on the thorny issue of reception centres for immigrants. Merkel has thus managed to defuse the most insidious mine for her government and to avert the crisis. Horst Seehofer will remain Interior Minister. The agreement was announced on Monday evening, after a long day of negotiations and after that the break had seemed inevitable following the Bavarian leader's intention to resign. The conservative "hawk" Wolfgang Schaeuble had also pushed for the search for a compromise: "The Union is on the verge ofabyss“, Angela Merkel's former finance minister had warned.
A "good compromise". It is a solution "to safeguard the European spirit" and "put order" on secondary movements", according to the chancellor and a “sustainable agreement“, for his opponent: these are the hot comments of the two protagonists. There is still a margin of uncertainty waiting for the Social Democrats (SPD) to let them know whether or not they will accept the agreement reached. Meanwhile, it was the general secretaries of the two parties who explained that in the "transit centers“, on the border with Austria, secondary migrants registered in other EU countries but then arriving in Germany will be destined.
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"The European Council showed that national measures can be taken but in collaboration with other European countries," Merkel explained. "And that's exactly what we're going to do," she added. The chancellor underlined that putting order in secondary movements, and respecting the European spirit, "is and has always been important to me".
The agreement, as was said, would concern the "transit zones for the refoulement of migrants". These would be closed centers to be set up on the border between Austria and Bavaria, where the applications of asylum seekers would be examined with rapid procedures. In the face of any refusal, rejections would proceed immediately, as in airport procedures. This is an idea already examined in 2015, at the height of the migrant crisis, but which was rejected at the time due to resistance from the Spd.
Faced with the compromise reached, Minister Seehofer withdrew his resignation and looks to October, when the Bavarian elections will take place, with one more arrow in his bow to counter the advance of the extreme right of the AfD.
