Merkel rejects Muslim migrant ban

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BERLIN, Aug 29, (Agencies): German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday slammed those countries in Europe who say they won’t take in Muslim refugees, a position that several eastern European governments have taken in response to the influx of migrants from the Islamic world.

Merkel said she was hopeful that European Union members would reach an agreement on outstanding questions arising from the migrant crisis, one of which is how to fairly distribute asylum-seekers among all the bloc’s 28 member states. She told German public broadcaster ARD that “everybody has to do their bit” and didn’t rule out the possibility of letting some countries take in fewer migrants if they contribute more financially instead

. “How the individual components are weighted will have to be seen,” said Merkel. But she reiterated her stance that blocking refugees based on their religion was misguided. “What I continue to think is wrong is that some say ‘we generally don’t want Muslims in our country, regardless of whether there’s a humanitarian need or not,’” she said. “We’re going to have to keep discussing that.” Her comments come almost a year after Merkel’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants stuck in other European countries to come to Germany. That move prompted a further wave of migration through the Balkans that culminated in the daily arrival of more than 10,000 asylum-seekers at German borders at one point. Officials have spoken of more than a million arrivals in 2015, but Germany’s top migration official said the actual figure was likely lower once duplicate registrations and people who traveled on to other countries are excluded.

Frank-Juergen Weise, the head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, said in an interview in the German weekly Bild am Sonntag that he expects a sharp drop in numbers in 2016 compared with last year. Weise told German weekly Bild am Sonntag that his agency is planning for between 250,000 and 300,000 new arrivals this year.

The influx prompted countries such as Hungary to sharply criticize Merkel, and even accuse her of threatening Europe’s stability. In Germany, anti-migrant feeling has increased too. A nationalist party to the right of Merkel’s Christian Democrats has received a surge in support and chancellor, who has stuck by her motto “we will manage,” has seen her popularity ratings fall.

Decide
A poll published Sunday by Bild am Sonntag found that 50 percent of respondents opposed a fourth term for Merkel, should she decide to run again in 2017. The survey of 501 voters, conducted Aug. 25 by the research firm TNS Emnid, had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points. In her interview Sunday, Merkel declined to be drawn on whether she would run again, or even when she might announce her intention to stand again.

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview on Saturday that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives had “underestimated” the challenge of integrating record numbers of migrants. Gabriel leads the Social Democrats (SPD) — the junior coalition partner in Merkel’s government — and his comments come as campaigning kicks off for a federal election next year and regional elections in Berlin and the eastern state of Mecklenburg- Vorpommern. Hundreds of thousands of migrants arrived in Germany from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere last year.

There is widespread concern about how to integrate them into German society and the labour market, and support for the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has grown. “I, we always said that it’s inconceivable for Germany to take in a million people every year,” Gabriel said in an interview with broadcaster ZDF. “There is an upper limit to a country’s integration ability,” he added at a news conference on Sunday. He said Germany had 300,000 new school children due to the migrant influx and added that the country could not manage to integrate so many into the school system every year because there would not be enough teachers.

Poland says Merkel is wrong to criticize European Union partners who are refusing to give refugee protection to Muslims. Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Konrad Szymanski, said in an interview Monday on state-run Radio Three that countries such as Poland which reject EU-negotiated refugee quotas are in line with the public mood. Szymanski was responding to Merkel’s criticism of EU countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, that have rebuffed EU plans to share responsibility across the 28-nation bloc for sheltering people fleeing war and poverty. “I believe it is harmful to Europe and is already bringing far-reaching opposition,” he said, adding that such views were common in Western Europe as well, where people “feel less and less safe.” Szymanski said forcing migrant quotas on EU nations violates their right to decide their own national policies and threatens European integration.

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