German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the 16 state governors agreed on new and stricter measures to curb the high number of migrants flowing into the country, reaching a compromise on an issue that has become a huge political problem for the government and a hot-button topic in society.
The new measures include speeding up asylum procedures, benefit restrictions for asylum-seekers and more financial aid from the federal government for the states and local communities dealing with the influx.
Speaking early Tuesday after an overnight meeting that lasted several hours, Scholz, a Social Democrat who leads a center-left government, called the agreement “a historical moment” — a remark that showed how much of a burden the topic had become for the government.
The number of new asylum applications for the year to date was around 73% higher at the end of September than in the same period last year, official statistics show.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the 16 state governors agreed on new and stricter measures to curb the high number of migrants flowing into the country, reaching a compromise on an issue that has become a huge political problem for the government and a hot-button topic in society.
The new measures include speeding up asylum procedures, benefit restrictions for asylum-seekers and more financial aid from the federal government for the states and local communities dealing with the influx.
Shelters for migrants and refugees have been filling up in Germany for months, and Scholz, who faces enormous pressure from the opposition and elsewhere to halt that trend, has said that “too many are coming.”
Some state governors had called for a new system of conducting asylum procedures outside of Germany to keep the migrants from arriving in the first place, but that measure didn’t pass.
The controls that Germany established at its borders with Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Poland and Austria are to be extended, but the time period was not clear.
Opposition leader Friedrich Merz, from the center-right Christian Democratic Union, rejected Scholz’s notion that the migration deal was “historic.”
The original article contains 725 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Some people legit believe „throwing out the immigrants!!!“ will solve all our financial, social and climate problems. Sad.
For a lot of countries, immigrants are the only thing that will save them from demographic collapse
