20 June 2018•Update: 20 June 2018
By Ayhan Simsek
BERLIN
The leaders of Germany and seven other EU member states will gather in Brussels on Sunday for an informal summit on the refugee crisis, officials said on Wednesday.
“Upon the invitation of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Brussels on Sunday and take part at the informal working meeting on the current issues of migration,” Steffen Seibert, the government spokesman, said at a news conference in Berlin.
EU member states Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Austria, Spain, Malta and France -- which have been directly affected by the refugee crisis -- have also confirmed their attendance to the mini-summit, diplomats have told Anadolu Agency.
Sunday’s meeting came amid growing pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel at home to find an EU-wide solution to the refugee crisis.
Her ultra-conservative coalition partner Christian Social Union (CSU) has pushed for unilateral measures and gave Merkel a two-week deadline.
On Monday, CSU’s leader and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said he would wait for the outcome of Merkel’s talks with EU partners until end of June and from July 1 he will start implementing stricter measures at Germany’s national borders.
He argued that asylum seekers should be turned away at Germany’s border if they entered the EU from another member state and first registered there. Or if they had already applied for asylum and been rejected.
Chancellor Merkel strongly opposed to Seehofer’s plan and said such a unilateral move would have “a domino effect”, prompting other EU member states to push back refugees and further increase the burden of member states like Italy and Greece.
Common asylum policy
She suggested negotiating bilateral agreements with the EU partners and accordingly send back asylum seekers to the country where they first registered and applied for asylum within the 28-member bloc.
Merkel also called for stronger solidarity among the EU member states in sharing the burden of refugee crisis.
The leaders of EU’s 28 member states will gather in Brussels on June 28-29 for a summit which would focus on the refugee crisis and Germany’s proposals for an EU-wide common asylum policy.
The CSU, which faces a regional election in Bavaria in October, has recently sharpened its criticism of Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy for refugees.
Germany received more than a million refugees in the last three years, mostly from Syria and Iraq.
Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open doors for refugees fleeing conflicts and persecution was widely criticized by conservative media outlets, and was exploited by the far-right and populist parties.
Her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party CSU have suffered heavy losses in the country's federal elections last year, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) scored record gains and entered the parliament for the first time.
