Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka/DPAGerman Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere warned Saturday that Berlin's generous offer of benefits for asylum seekers was a siren call for migrants. This is part of the pull effect towards Germany," de Maiziere, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in an interview with the Rheinische Post regional daily. Under Merkel's impetus, Germany welcomed more than a million asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016, all of them ushered in by Maiziere's interior ministry. Aid for refugees "cannot be reduced below the subsistence minimum," argued Katrin Goering-Eckardt, head of the Greens parliamentary group. De Maiziere on Saturday stressed the need to harmonise asylum procedures for European nations, an issue already broached at EU-level.

Source: The Local September 09, 2017 14:37 UTC