Backlash after Merkel’s green light to thousands
BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary to enter Germany caused a rift in her conservative bloc yesterday when her Bavarian allies accused her of giving “a totally wrong signal” to Europe.
The dispute broke out after Austria and Germany threw open their borders to thousands of exhausted refugees bussed to Hungary’s border by a right-wing government overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and loath to take them in.
Germany expects a record influx of 800 000 migrants and refugees this year, by far the most in the European Union. More than 100 000 asylum seekers were registered in August. Europe’s biggest and richest economy draws many refugees, who often have relatives already living there.
Merkel and Hungarian President Viktor Orban had agreed by telephone that the decision to let refugees – many from Syria’s civil war – cross the borders was a temporary one made for humanitarian reasons, a German government spokesman said.
But Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann, whose Christian Social Union (CSU) is the regional sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Berlin’s ruling coalition, accused her of having pushed forward without asking Germany’s federal states that had to deal with the refugee influx.
Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer and other CSU leaders agreed in a conference call that Merkel’s green light to refugees stuck in Hungary was a “wrong decision by the federal government”, the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported.
CSU spokesman Simon Rehak confirmed the report and said the staunchly conservative party would put the issue on the agenda of a high-level coalition meeting that was due to take place late yesterday.
A public opinion poll last week showed Merkel’s popularity has dropped over her handling of the refugee crisis.
But the centre-left Social Democrats, junior partner in Merkel’s “grand coalition”, rushed to her defence, saying it was the “only right thing to do”. – Reuters