The Chancellor said that as head of a Christian party she refused to take part in a “competition” to discover “those who are the most unfriendly to refugees, will stop them coming in”. Seehofer told Bild newspaper that the meeting would examine how to integrate refugees.
Seehofer stopped short of a previous threat to close Bavaria’s borders – which as the state’s minister-president he does not have the legal power to do – while saying if the government did not act to improve the situation, “we’ll do whatever is necessary”. The state of Bavaria threatened on Friday to take the German government to court if it fails to take immediate steps to limit the flow of asylum seekers to Germany, APA reports quoting Reuters.
“If Bavaria starts to slow down the flow of refugees and to put more controls in place, then Austria will be forced to take similar measures”, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the Austrian interior minister said.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere called such violence “shameful”.
Governor Horst Seehofer and his conservative government have been the harshest domestic critics of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s approach to the migration crisis.
She said the scandal that has engulfed Volkswagen AG, the largest automaker in Europe and the biggest in the world in terms of sales after the first six months of the year, should not be used to pillory the entire German auto industry.
In a television interview on Wednesday, Merkel sought to paper over their differences, praising Seehofer for his efforts during the refugee crisis, and insisting she did have a management plan.
Otherwise, “this question of refugees risk splitting our society”, warned the senior politicians, both of whom are Social Democrats in the left-right coalition.
“We have clear expectations from the federal government,” he said.
Responding to the AfD move, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany was governed by the rule of law and that citizens were free to make legal complaints as they saw fit. “We need to be very vigilant, so I repeat my demand to Berlin to limit immigration”, he added, calling for better protection of the EU’s external borders.
“Despite the unprecedented readiness of the Germans to help, we must do what is possible to bring the immigration figures down again“, they wrote. “Nobody would do that,” he said, adding the causes of flight, hunger and misery had to be fought.