Germany: Merkel Caves To Seehofer on Border Deal

Never Forget

From The Guardian:

Angela Merkel has reached a deal on migration with her rebellious interior minister, Horst Seehofer, defusing a bitter row that had threatened her government. Both sides hammered out “a good compromise … after a difficult struggle”, Merkel said on Monday evening, adding that it involved setting up holding and processing centres for asylum seekers near German borders. 

“We have reached an agreement after very intense negotiations,” Seehofer agreed, stressing that he intended to stay on in his cabinet post after earlier threatening to quit. 

“We now have a clear agreement how to prevent illegal immigration across the Austrian-German border in future,” said Seehofer, whose Christian Social Union (CSU) party is the traditional Bavaria state ally of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. 

He added that details would be released soon.

Here are the details:

“In order to better regulate, control and prevent secondary migration, we come to this agreement: 

1) We agree to a new border regime at the German-Austrian border, which ensures that asylum seekers for whose asylum procedures other EU-countries are in charge, will be refused entry 

2) To do so, we will establish transit centres, from which the asylum seekers will be directly sent back to the countries in charge (refusing entry on the basis of the legal implication of non-entry). We do not want to act uncoordinated, but come to administrative agreements, or establish communication, with the concerned countries. 

3) In those cases where countries refuse administrative agreements, the rejection at the German-Austrian border will be on the basis of an agreement with the Republic of Austria.”