Germany budgets $6.6b for migrants

Germany is to spend 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion) next year to support the hundreds of thousands of migrants coming to the country.

The decision was reached as Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said on Monday that his country will propose that the European Union set up more legal ways for refugees to arrive in the Nordic nation.

Lofven said the EU must introduce a permanent and obligatory redistribution system for when disasters trigger drastically higher numbers of refugees seeking entry into the bloc, and it should increase its quota of accepted refugees to about 100,000 from the 22,000 agreed to earlier.

In a late-night meeting lasting until early Monday in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government agreed to introduce legal measures making it easier to deport asylum-seekers from countries considered "secure states", such as Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania.

Asylum-seekers will also get less cash in the future and more noncash benefits.

German officials recently predicted that up to 800,000 migrants will arrive by the end of this year, many of them refugees fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Iraq and Eritrea.

"The federal government will increase its 2016 budget by 3 billion euros to cope with the situation with refugees and asylum-seekers," the conservative CDU and Social Democrat SPD parties said in a joint statement.

"The regional state governments and local authorities will make available a further 3 billion euros," the statement added.

Meanwhile, Austria said it plans to end emergency measures that since Saturday have allowed thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary into Austria and Germany.

AP - AFP - Reuters

(China Daily 09/08/2015 page1)