Germany Announces Plan to Cope with Migrant Influx

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/world/europe/germany-de-maiziere-migrants-refugees-asylum.html

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BERLIN — Germany expects as many as 800,000 asylum seekers or refugees this year, four times the number who came last year, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said on Wednesday in announcing new actions to cope with the biggest influx since the aftermath of World War II.

While Germany will work to process asylum applications faster, change procedures and increase accommodation for new arrivals, “it is also time for European solutions, and it is time to think how we can bring down such numbers for Germany in future,” the minister said at a news conference.

In the long term, he said, it is impractical for Germany to absorb some 40 percent of refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Europe — many of them Syrians and others fleeing turmoil in the Middle East, or Africans also escaping from war.

But Germany also has a large influx from the impoverished states of the western Balkans: Albania and the former Yugoslavia. They make up about 40 percent of the new arrivals, Mr. de Maizière said, but stand little chance of qualifying for asylum and will be returned home after expedited reviews of their cases.

The high proportion of Balkan applicants chokes the system and accommodation needed for those from the Middle East and Africa, German officials have said. Mr. de Maizière said it was “unacceptable, and for Europe, embarrassing.”

According to figures through June from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, Hungary has registered 32,800 refugees this year, Italy 15,200, France 14,800, Sweden 11,400, Austria 9,700 and Britain 7,300.

The figures for Hungary suggest that migrants who go from Turkey to Greece are then making their way through the Balkans toward the richer nations of the European Union. Hungary, a nation of about 10 million people, is building a fence to try to prevent the arrivals from crossing into its territory.

If Europe does not act to share the burden more evenly, Mr. de Maizière said, then it might prove necessary to close borders opened by the Schengen Agreement, which allows free movement without border controls across much of the European Union.

He insisted that the recent increase in arrivals was unforeseen. Germany will take note of the swelling tide of arrivals by registering the numbers of all who come, and not just those who submit an asylum application.

Figures for July illustrated his point: hours earlier, the Interior Ministry said about 39,000 people applied for asylum last month. By contrast, he told reporters, 83,000 people arrived in Germany in July seeking asylum or status as refugees. Figures for August have already topped 50,000, he said.

Noting that the refugee crisis “is a challenge for us all,” the minister also stressed that anyone who arrived in Germany seeking help had the right “to be welcomed and accommodated in a worthy, secure and decent fashion.”

“Everyone has the right to a fair process” in judging their future, he said, condemning the 202 attacks registered on asylum shelters and refugees this year as unworthy of Germany.

Mr. de Maizière said he had not only reorganized Germany’s bureaucracy to coordinate better between the federal, state and local authorities but also would work with European colleagues. He plans to meet his French counterpart on Thursday in Berlin.

On Tuesday, Die Welt published an interview with António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, in which he said the refugee burden in Europe should land on more shoulders.

“In the long run, Germany cannot take 40 percent and bear this burden,” Mr. de Maizière said. “We need short-, medium- and long-term solutions.”

Above all, he said, goals must be defined. “We cannot simultaneously want that everyone is allowed to come and at the same time want to reduce the numbers of those who do come,” he said. “That won’t work. That means that, guided by these forecasts, we need a discussion here in Germany. And that is really necessary.”