Germany only has capacity for a maximum 200,000 asylum seekers a year, about a fifth of the number it received in 2015, Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer said Sunday.
“In Germany, the arrival of 100,000 to a maximum 200,000 asylum seekers and war refugees a year would pose no problem,” Seehofer, who heads the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), told Bild newspaper.
The CSU, which has been up in arms over Merkel’s welcoming refugee policy, is calling for Germany to cap the number of asylum seekers it takes in.
“Limiting the number of migrants must be the main objective in 2016,” Seehofer said ahead of the CSU’s annual conference this week in the Bavarian mountain resort of Wildbad Kreuth that Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron are scheduled to attend.
“This figure (of 200,000) is tolerable and, in that case, integration would also work properly. For me, anything above that is excessive,” he added, warning of up to 1.5 million arrivals in 2016 unless measures to check the migrant tide were taken.
Merkel has so far categorically refused to set a limit. In her New Year’s address she told Germans the influx was “an opportunity for tomorrow”.
Germany took in almost 1.1 million asylum seekers in 2015, five times the 2014 tally, local media reported this week, citing unpublished official figures.
Bavaria is the main crossing point into the country for migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Seehofer took the chancellor to task on her refugee policy at a CSU meeting in November, where the two shared a stage.
Stung by his criticism Merkel rebounded at a CDU gathering the following month, winning a standing ovation from party members with a speech defending Germany’s “humanitarian responsibility” towards migrants while also calling for a “tangible” reduction in numbers.
‘Sweden could take in more immigrants’
Sweden meanwhile said it could accept greater numbers of migrants if they were distributed more evenly across the country.
“There are 40 to 50 municipalities that are facing a crisis, but the other 200 to 220 municipalities say they can do more,” Per-Arne Andersson, a top official at the Swedish Association of Local and Municipal Governments, told Swedish radio.
Sweden, with a population of 9.8 million, took in some 160,000 asylum seekers in 2015, the highest number of refugees per capita by any European Union nation.
But arrivals have slowed dramatically. After a peak of 10,500 asylum seekers during the week ending November 15, the number fell to about 3,500 a week by mid-December, according to the Migration Agency.
In a bid to stem the flow of migrants, Sweden reinstated border controls on November 12, and two weeks later announced a drastic tightening of its asylum policy.
Erik Nilsson, a senior official in the prime minister’s office for refugee and labor issues, says the key issue is accommodation.
“We need for people to be able to find their own housing, using their relatives, and we also need more refugee housing facilities,” he told Swedish radio.
The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have said more than one million migrants and refugees reached Europe in 2015.
Most were refugees fleeing war and violence in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
(staff with AFP)