A controversial refugee deal reached between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Horst Seehofer regarding the EU refugee crisis. The CSU is the Bavarian sister party of the German Christian Democrats (CDU) and is considered to have an important influence it the CDU policy making.
The Local Germany reported that the two sides reached an agreement on Tuesday, concerning a new plan to hold refugees at EU borders before distributing them around the Union. The Local, reported that Merkel promised that in future, refugees would be registered and distributed fairly among European Union countries. However, the registration and distribution process will be taking place at EU borders and the people in need will not be allowed to travel straight to the EU country they wish to live in. The German Chancellor added that the deportations would also be sped up for those whose asylum applications failed. “I hope overall that in a few years, people in Germany will be able to say: They did it right back then, and we were able to manage it. And we’re working very intensively towards that,” she said.
Before the meeting, Seehofer has been highly critical of the current refugee policy promoted by the German government accusing CDU of letting Bavaria to deal alone with massive influx of refugees waiting at Germany’s border with Austria.
After Tuesday’s meeting though, Seehofer and Merkel appeared united and claimed that they have reached a consensus regarding Germany’s refugee policies. “We have to agree. So that the public sees that the coalition partners are in a position to act in this historic project,” Seehofer said and added CSU and CDU must appear united in front of the coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD).
The SPD has voiced concerns over several facets of the proposed CDU/CSU law changes- including so-called “transit zones.” The so-called zones are proposed holding camps at the EU borders, where the registration process and the filtering on whether the people in need are certified for asylum will be taking place.
The left-centre SPD said that instead of calling the camps, “transit zones” it would be better to be called as “prisons.” SPD said that the EU government need to focus more on how to better integrate and accommodate the people in need and SPD leader, Sigmar Gabriel stressed that the transit zones will not have a positive impact on the refugee crisis.
On Monday, Gabriel said that few of the newest arrivals to Germany had come from the “safe” countries (referring to Balkans) and therefore the establishment of the transit zones would have a very limited impact on the total immigration numbers.
On Monday Merkel said to a CDU audience that “it is not the first time that we have to convince the SPD of reasonable things.” She expressed her strong belief that the transit zones are the right way for quickly filtering the migrants from the refugees.