Berlin: German Chancellor Angela Merkel says her government and its Hungarian counterpart have “differing views” on how to deal with migration, adding that Europe could not simply “uncouple” itself from the plight of refugees.
Speaking after talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Merkel said Budapest “does not feel at all responsible for processing asylum applications” and thinks refugees should be dealt with by the countries at the European Union’s external borders, where they first registered.
Orban hit back at Merkel, saying that controls at Hungary’s southernborder were lifting an “immense burden” off Germany’s shoulders. He added that it was therefore “unfair that people in Germany often reprimand us for a lack of solidarity.”
Orban, one of the fiercest European critics of Merkel’s decision to keep German borders open, was in Berlin to discuss with Merkel the implications of her decision to allow closed migrant centres to be set up along the country’s border.
Merkel is hoping to forge bilateral deals with more than a dozen EU countries for the rapid return of migrants who previously registered or applied for asylum there. Budapest and Prague have expressed opposition to any such deal.
The chancellor agreed to the migrant centre plan this week under duress from her renegade Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. That agreement calls for so-called transit centres near the border to hold some groups of asylum seekers under police supervision while their status is checked.
The Social Democrats (SPD), junior partner in the coalition along side the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, have yet to agree to the transit centres and have said they will not tolerate “closed” centres.
Government sources expect the party leaders to reach a compromise, however.
Seehofer — who is also head of the CSU, the more conservative Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s CDU — also arrived in Vienna for talks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on a deal that would see Austria taking back migrants that cannot enter Germany.
Kurz has expressed concern about large groups of migrants amassing in its territory due to the policy proposed by Merkel, but Seehofer said on Thursday that the talks would be conducted in an “amicable, consensual”
manner. — dpa
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