Merkel Moves To Tighten Refugee Asylum Rules After Outrage Over Sex Assaults

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government moved swiftly to tighten asylum rules in response to public outrage over New Year’s Eve sexual assaults as the German leader warned that failing to gain control of the region’s refugee crisis is putting Europe at risk.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic-led bloc and Social Democratic coalition partner will try to reach an agreement this week on rules to speed the expulsion of law-breaking asylum seekers, CDU parliamentary whip Michael Grosse-Broemer said Tuesday in Berlin. Merkel late Monday underscored the urgency of finding solutions as the political fallout from the assaults threatens her open-door refugee policy and passport-free travel in Europe.

“We are vulnerable because we don’t have the orderliness and management of the refugees under control yet,” Merkel said in a speech to a business group in the western city of Mainz. While expressing frustration that progress on securing the European Union’s outer frontiers is “too slow,” she vowed to uphold open borders between the members of the Schengen agreement because it benefits Germany’s economy.

Merkel plans to meet with lawmakers later Tuesday to move the legislation forward as the number of criminal complaints linked to a group of over 1,000 men who gathered in front of Cologne’s main station on New Year’s Eve surged to more than 500. Some 45 percent of the complaints involve sexual assault against women, Cologne police said this week. Twenty-two of 32 suspects identified by authorities are asylum seekers, the Interior Ministry said.

Merkel is confronting what she has called the “most complex” challenge of her 10 years in power, with the incidents in Cologne and other cities blowing up the country’s already heated debate on migration. The arrival of 1.1 million asylum seekers last year has strained Germany’s ability to handle the record influx.

“We’re facing a parliamentary week in which the gaps have to be clearly addressed,” Grosse-Broemer said.

Support Drops

Support for Merkel’s bloc and the Social Democrats declined 1 percentage point each to 35 percent and 21.5 percent, respectively, in an INSA poll for Bild newspaper published Tuesday. Alternative for Germany, which calls for shutting the border to migrants and doesn’t have seats in the national parliament, gained 2 points to 11.5 percent in the Jan. 8-11 poll of 2,039 people. No margin of error was given, and three other national polls taken in January put support for Merkel’s bloc at 39 percent.

Responding to the attacks, Merkel’s CDU party agreed last weekend to lower the legal barrier for foreigners who commit crimes.

“After what happened during that night in Cologne, where young women in particular went through terrible experiences, we in the government are thinking intensely about what could be changed,” the chancellor said Monday. “We will reach conclusions very quickly.”

Holger Muench, the head of Germany’s federal crime-fighting agency, said security officials are investigating to what extent the assaults were an organized event. Similar attacks linked to public New Year’s Eve celebrations were reported in Sweden, Austria and Switzerland, he said in an interview Tuesday with Berlin-based Inforadio.

“These kinds of events generally are organized via social media,” he said.

Merkel renewed her pledge to “noticeably reduce” the number of arriving refugees this year, telling the regional business audience in Mainz that “there’s no question that we have to make it happen.”