German ministry wants to give a few Syrians new status

“If they all wanted to decide to come to Europe, Europe would have to have the right to say “No thank you”, Schaeuble said during a school visit in Berlin.

BERLIN (AP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff downplayed a short-lived initiative by the country’s interior minister to give many Syrians restricted asylum, insisting Sunday that procedures remain unchanged.

Germany is set to speed up the deportation of asylum-seekers after weeks of disputes within the government coalition over the “overwhelming” surge of new refugees. The divisions re-opened over the weekend, after Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in future Syrian refugees would receive modified refugee status and be barred from having family members join them, a statement he later retracted.

Germany now grants most Syrians full asylum automatically, and has even waived European Union rules under which refugees should apply for asylum in the first member state they reach.

However ill-planned and ill-considered Merkel’s actions may have been, the confusion and hesitation shown today by the government reflects a basic conflict in Germany between their self image of a tolerant, welcoming society and the reality pressing in on them in the form of a million or more desperate, poor, and largely untrained refugees who will change the country in ways that no one can presently imagine.

It appears Mr de Maiziere did not inform the chancellery of his new initiative.

The idea was quickly shot down by the chancellery, which said it had no advance knowledge of it, and sparked outrage from Merkel’s centre-left coalition allies the Social Democrats (SPD).

Mr Altmaier described the episode as a “brief irritation”, but Robert Habeck, an opposition Green party politicians, described it as an “attempted coup”.

De Maiziere told Deutschlandfunk earlier this week that Syrians would be granted a “subsidiary” protection. Seehofer told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the status of Syrian refugees should be individually checked. It rejects Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming approach to refugees. Family reunifications would also be disallowed, De Maziere said.

Meanwhile, the German government has drawn up secret plans to cope with a political and humanitarian crisis if countries in the Balkans close their borders to refugees according to a leaked confidential report.

In the rare truce, Merkel, Gabriel and Seehofer stood shoulder-to-shoulder and presented a package of measures, including a common ID system and database for asylum seekers.