Merkel Struggling to Get EU Countries to Follow Germany’s Lead on Migration
Local Editor
German Chancellor Angela Merkel led by example on how to approach the refugee crisis in Europe.
Her two-year struggle to get other European Union countries to follow suit, however, by overhauling the bloc's asylum rules, won't be over any time soon.
Despite the looming June deadline, Merkel said in a Tuesday statement that there would be no agreement reached at this week's EU summit.
At the center of the impasse is a disagreement about who should bear the ultimate responsibility for handling an asylum seeker's claim.
Currently, migrants are processed in the state in which they arrive-something that has recently placed a lopsided burden on countries like Italy, where the migrant crisis has not abated as much as it has elsewhere.
Even then, Germany is still home to the majority of Europe's refugees.
This follows its 2015 decision to process the applications of most Syrian asylum seekers who reached the country during the peak of the migrant crisis, even if they had landed elsewhere first.
Italy proposes the end of this system. Its new prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has called for the "automatic" redistribution of asylum seekers arriving in Italy to other EU countries, much to the chagrin of countries like Hungary and Poland, who staunchly oppose those kinds of burden-sharing measures.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
Comments
- Related News
