Germany eyes breakthrough in EU migration dispute this year

By Gabriela Baczynska
July 7 (Reuters) - Germany said on Tuesday it wants European
Union nations to overcome a deadlock on how to handle refugees
and migrants this year, weighing in on a bruising dispute that
has divided the 27-member bloc for years.
With Berlin holding the EU's rotating presidency until the
end of the year, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said he wanted
to get "at least a political agreement on the most important
issues" to reform the bloc's asylum system that collapsed in
2015 during a major increase in migrant arrivals to Europe.
"Whenever a vessel arrives, we always make huge efforts to
distribute migrants to EU countries. But it's always (just) a
small number of member states willing to admit migrants and this
in unworthy of the EU," Seehofer said via translation.
"If they are entitled to international protection, we should
expect solidarity from all EU member states to admit these
people. You cannot solve this question by leaving it to Italy,
Spain, Malta or Greece."
That goes to the heart of the dispute in the EU, where the
ex-communist, eastern countries including Poland and Hungary
have dug in their heels, refusing to host any of the people who
flee wars and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Unable to agree how to provide for those who make it to the
bloc, the EU has turned to tightening its borders and asylum
laws, slashing the number of arrivals from more than one million
in 2015 to 123,000 last year.
Seehofer said he hoped the reluctant countries would now
reconsider.
The EU's top migration official, Commissioner Ylva
Johansson, said she would propose an overhaul of the its
troubled asylum rules after the 27 national leaders agree on a
mass economic stimulus to recover from the coronavirus pandemic
- another thorny theme requiring unanimity of all EU countries.
"We cannot continue with this ad hoc solution," Johansson
said on Tuesday of repeated instances of migrants being stuck on
boats in the sea for weeks before countries including Sweden,
the Netherlands or Germany agreed to take them in.