close
Thursday March 28, 2024

Merkel vows to soldier on despite migration dispute

By REUTERS
July 05, 2018

BERLIN: Germany’s right-left coalition government will serve its full four-year term despite a bitter dispute over immigration policy, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday, downplaying fears of instability in Europe’s largest economy.

Merkel struck a deal this week with her Bavarian allies to limit migrant entries through the border with Austria but she still needs to secure support from her Social Democrat (SPD) junior coalition partners.

"I can’t promise that there won’t be disputes again about other issues, as this is usual when a government includes three parties," Merkel told ARD television when asked if her coalition would last a full four-year term. "This time it was a heavy dispute about a topic that is also very emotional.

But I firmly expect and I’ll do my part to ensure that we do our government work in a good way, and not only now but also in the coming years," she said.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) averted a resignation by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who leads the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), by agreeing a system of transit centres on the German border.

From there, migrants already registered elsewhere in the European Union and not entitled to settle in Germany could be deported.

The SPD, which must back the plan for it to go ahead, wants to avoid creating the impression that the transit centres will amount to internment centres for refugees.

The agreement has disconcerted some Social Democrats who fear for the migrants’ civil liberties.

Merkel told ARD that migrants will be held for a maximum of 48 hours at the transit centres, an apparent attempt to allay SPD concerns, adding that the 48-hour limit was mandated by the German constitution.

Earlier on Wednesday, Merkel defended the planned tighter border controls from attacks by both the SPD and the far-right opposition.

Some members of the centre-left SPD had criticised the new rules as being too draconian while the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party called on Merkel to resign, denouncing the measures as too soft and vague.

Migrant arrivals peaked in 2015 at more than a million people, many of them fleeing the Syrian war and therefore entitled to asylum, while others were trying to escape poverty.

Numbers have since dropped sharply but Merkel told parliament that Germans had to be reassured.

"Order must be brought to all forms of migration so people have the impression that law and order is being implemented," she said to applause from her own lawmakers but jeers from the AfD.