BY BEN KERRINGHAM
Germany will be facing “an avalanche” of refugees engendered by “careless” actions, Wolfgang Schäuble -the country’s powerful finance minister, has warned today.
The finance minister today sparked fury as he audaciously expressed a growing concern about the country’s ”refugees welcome” approach in a direct attack at the ruling party presided over by Ms Merkel.
“You can trigger avalanches when a rather careless skier goes on to the slope … and moves a bit of snow,” the 73-year-old finance minister declared an economic conference yesterday evening. “I don’t know whether we are already at the stage where the avalanche has reached the valley or whether we are [still] on first third of the slope [and there is more to come].”
He added: “If we are on the upper third of the slope, then the image of the avalanche is a real challenge. We Germans cannot cope with this alone.” It is the second attack in under a week directed at Ms Mekel’s refuge policy. Only last Sunday, he supported the interior minister after plans to block the rights of Syrian refugees to bring their families to Germany. Without the continued support for the rights of refugees, the topic would have quickly gone off the agenda
Mr Schäuble’s latest remarks incited an assertive response from the social democrats, the CDU/CSU’s centre are strongly opposed to any clamp down on family reunions. “People in need are not a natural catastrophe,” SPD Justice minister Heiko Maas replied on today.
In the meantime, cash benefits for asylum seekers are being replaced with vouchers. It has also declared that refugees could be safely returned to all western Balkan countries — adding Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro to an existing list — rather than granting them asylum in Germany.
Last week, Ms Merkel announced plans to accelerate asylum processing and restrict family reunion rights for refugees granted “subsidiary protection”- a legal terminology for a status below asylum. However, following talks with her coalition partners, there were calls by CDU/CSU hardliners for family reunions to be restricted even further for Syrians who should be entitled to this right. They base their stance on the view that it is not Germany’s responsibility to accept people in safe camps in Turkey and nearby states.
But CDU/CSU hardliners want her to go further, notably by limiting family reunions, even for Syrians who would otherwise be entitled to this based on their asylum claims. They argue that Germany has no obligation to accept people already in safe camps in Turkey and other neighbouring states. The state of affairs is unfortunate because refugees cannot be treated as constituting ”an avalanche”, but at the same time there might be an argument for a line to be drawn somewhere depending on the costs or the implications of taking in more refugees. The arguments we probably now need to hear is how it would affect Germany in real terms if they take on the high numbers of refugees, bearing in mind that this is a human crisis going on at the moment. All countries restricting refugee numbers need a credible reason to deny refugees union with their families since they did not create the state of emergency Syrian civilians find themselves in. Ms Merkel’s poll ratings have fallen sharply over the dispute as she faces an internal war over her refugee policy.
