Angela Merkel's government in Germany is in the balance. Bavarian hawkish Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has said he wants to resign. And the chancellor is facing the most difficult moment on the matter of migrants since the birth of the new coalition executive with the CSU and the SPD.
“An agreement with Italy was not possible. Italy first wants to obtain a reduction of migrants arriving in that country. The premier said they have the impression of having been left in the lurch for a long time”. This is Angela Merkel's version in the interview given by the German chancellor to the ZDF broadcaster. The interview was broadcast on Sunday evening and was also an opportunity to respond to Interior Minister Seehofer on the issue of migrants and the denials, arrived from Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic on the agreements, announced by the German government through a spokesperson , regarding the pushbacks of second-level migrants. Agreements on this issue had been announced at the conclusion of the EU Council, with Greece and Spain.
“I am sorry for the misunderstandings – Merkel hastened to clarify – we have not entered into agreements”, but there is an exchange “at a political level”.
After Prague and Budapest, which had already done so on Saturday, Warsaw has now also denied that there are "new agreements to accept asylum seekers from other European states". This was stated by the Polish government spokeswoman in a tweet. It is the third country on the list of 14 cited by Chancellor Angela Merkel as European partners who would have an agreement to speed up the procedures for returning migrants registered elsewhere.
The rejection is strongly backed by interior minister Horst Seehofer (leader of the CSU, which has entered the government coalition with the SPD) who threatened to resign during the party's leadership meeting. The news leaked during the night, but a press conference was canceled and official confirmations are awaited. Seehofer said that the meeting he had with Merkel after the EU Council was "unsatisfactory" and that the agreements signed at the European Council "they are not equivalent" to the pushbacks at the borders on which the CSU leader has been insisting for some time. A new chapter is therefore opening in the tough tug of war within the government coalition, the consequences of which could be heavy not only for Germany but also for the Schengen agreement and the balance in the EU.
The German chancellor gave news of the agreements defined by Germany with 14 countries in one eight-page letter addressed to the leaders of the CSU and the SPD, its CDU's partner in the government coalition. The news was released by the German press agency 'Dpa' after viewing the official document
In the document Merkel explains that i already registered asylum seekers in the country of arrival and blocked at the German border will be transferred to "supervised centres", where they will wait for the outcome of their request. The centers that Merkel calls "anchor" will be in Germany: they will host migrants who have tried to pass border controls and those who have not made their first entry into Europe in one of the countries with which Germany has entered into bilateral agreements for the return (14 countries plus Greece and Spain).
The 14 countries with which Germany has declared that it has defined agreements for the rapid return of migrants who had applied for political asylum on their territory but who had subsequently tried to enter Germany are Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic (the so-called Visegrad countries, excluding Slovakia), Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Holland, Portugal and Sweden.
The document foreshadows sending German policemen to help tighten controls on external borders of the EU in Bulgaria and, with this measure, significantly reduce the flow of migrants through the meshes of the Schengen area. Merkel, according to the document, expected to start the new measures by the end of August. Then the deluge of denials and the correction of the German government.
Updated 7:59am Monday July 2nd
