Photo: DPAGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a setback on Friday when the upper house of parliament rejected a proposal to declare three North African states "safe countries of origin" in refugee law. The proposed designation for Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco aimed to make it easier for Germany to deny asylum requests from their citizens on the grounds that they were safe in their home countries. The designation, which presumes a government does not systematically persecute opponents, would also aim to deter citizens of the three Maghreb countries countries from illegally heading to the EU in future. But the "safe countries" plan was rejected by the leftist Greens and Linke parties, which had voiced concerns over the rights records of those countries, including on the treatment of homosexuals. "We have to be in a position to quickly and easily reject asylum requests that are not based on political persecution but purely on economic reasons," he was quoted as saying by news agency DPA.

Source: The Local March 10, 2017 18:22 UTC