Munich (dpa) – Bavaria on Friday accused the Italian government of
contributing to the German state‘s migration problems by failing to
undertake the proper procedures for dealing with the latest surge in
asylum seekers.
“It is a fact that in many cases Italy intentionally does not take
either personal data or fingerprints, which means that the refugees
can apply for asylum in another country without returning to Italy,”
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told dpa.
He said that there had been a jump in the numbers of those applying
for asylum in Bavaria, which on Thursday hit a single-day record of
319 in the southern German state.
“One reason is that a significant portion of the incoming refugees in
Italy travel onto Germany without intentionally intending to do so,”
Herrmann said.
Herrmann also pointed to discrepancies in the official figures.
Last year in Germany there were over 126,000 asylum applications. In
Italy, however, there were only 27,930 applications, he said.
At the same time, about 60,000 refugees landed on Italian coastal
areas last year, according to figures from the UN Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR).
Herrmann is a member of the conservative Christian Social Union
(CSU), the Bavarian-based associate party of Chancellor Angela
Merkel‘s Christian Democrats.
Rome has for months called for financial support to help deal with
the high cost of rescuing refugees trying to travel to Europe across
the Mediterranean in often overloaded boats.
Herrmmann accused Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano of
complaining about the heavy burden due to refugees travelling across
the Mediterranean Sea while at the same time disregarding the
European Asylum Policy.
“[That policy] says that the country of first entry is responsible
for the implementation of asylum procedures,” he said.
Under the 2003 Dublin II agreement, which sets out European Union
rules for handling refugees, asylum seekers are the responsibility of
the country they first reach.
And since Italy receives EU funding to handle the problem, “the other
EU states can therefore demand a corresponding sense of solidarity
from Italy, namely following the common European asylum system, to
which the EU has agreed to,” Herrmann said.
“This is even more true because the crisis in the Middle East as well
as the brutal violence of Islamic State (IS) is likely to add to the
refugee pressure on Europe,” he said.
Germany is “the largest recipient nation” of refugees among the
industrialized nations, UNHCR chief Antonio Gutierrez had said in
March.
# Notebook
## Internet links
– [Dublin II Agreement](http://dpaq.de/Quo6D)