Tensions are building in Germany’s ruling grand coalition amid disagreement over whether to back binding EU immigration quotas to tackle the growing refugee crisis.
Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel has dismissed a demand for binding migration quotas made by federal interior minister Thomas de Maizière.
Ahead of another EU crisis summit on Wednesday, Mr de Maizière told Der Spiegel the bloc should accept a finite number of migrants and send the rest back to safe countries in their region of origin.
"We cannot accept all the people who are fleeing conflict zones or poverty and want to come to Europe or Germany, " said Mr de Maizière.
His remarks put the interior minister at odds with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has said everyone who comes to Germany is entitled to fair asylum procedures. But with an estimated one million refugees now forecast to arrive in Germany this year, Dr Merkel is facing growing domestic pressure.
‘Political games’
Yesterday evening Mr Gabriel warned members of his SPD to “stop playing political games” with the refugee crisis and to cease their attacks on Mr de Maizière’s quota plans. But he said the interior minister’s quota plans were both at odds with the German constitution.
"It's also the opposite of what the chancellor has said," said Mr Gabriel on German public television. "What should we do, send people back to Hungary when we know how they treat people?"
Last week Mr de Maizière’s ministry proposed toughening asylum laws by reducing benefits to new arrivals and sending migrants back to the first EU country they reached.
This latter proposal would reverse Berlin’s decision last month to set aside for people fleeing the Syrian civil war the so-called Dublin Regulation, requiring people to make their asylum claims in their EU country of entry.
The proposals have been criticised by asylum groups but Mr de Maizière's tougher line has found widespread agreement in the CDU. He told Der Spiegel Europe must refrain from generous refugee quotas, creating instead "a legal means of immigration" that caps the numbers of arrivals.
Once the continental limit on refugees has been reached, Mr de Maizière said they should be returned to their “region of origin [to] live in security and without persecution”.
“We should financially help the countries concerned,” he said.
At a meeting in Berlin, US foreign minister John Kerry praised Germany's leadership in the refugee crisis.
His German colleague Frank-Walter Steinmeier said a renewed diplomatic effort with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia to resolve the Syrian civil war was the only sustainable solution to the crisis. "We need to take seriously threats from all groups, including Isis, and set aside narrow national interests," he said.
