Germany says it will stem flow of undocumented refugees
BERLIN Germany imposed emergency border controls with Austria to stem the tide of refugees, the interior minister said Sunday. Train service was stopped in both directions.
“The goal is to limit the current influx of refugees to Germany and to have them arrive in an orderly fashion to their destination,” Thomas de Maiziere.
He provided few details of what the border operation would entail and how it would be carried out, but said checks could also be put in place along other borders in the coming days.
Germany’s Federal Police said it was moving units into the Austrian border area to limit uncontrolled entry by people lacking the proper documentation.
“Germany has shown great helpfulness in recent weeks with its full-time workers and especially the many thousands of volunteers,” de Maiziere said. “This helpfulness cannot be overstretched.
De Maiziere was to meet Monday with his counterparts in Brussels.
Rules requiring asylum applications to be filed in the EU member state where a refugee arrives known as the Dublin regulation are still in effect, he said, while calling for a “fair distribution” of asylum seekers across the EU.
The decision to stop train service was made after talks between the head of the German railways, Ruediger Grube, and his Austrian counterpart, Christian Kern, she said.
At the time the service was suspended, about 1,800 asylum seekers and regular passengers were in trains heading from Austria to Germany.
Ten thousand refugees a day entered Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel joined Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann a week ago to call for Hungary to facilitate their passage across the border into Austria.
German state politicians complained over the weekend that they had been left unprepared for refugees crossing the country’s southern borders during the past week.
(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)
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