German interior minister unveils long-awaited 'migration master plan'

BERLIN - German Interior Minister and Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Horst Seehofer has unveiled a long-awaited "migration master plan" for a stricter national asylum policy regime on Tuesday.

A draft version of the document has already been the source of heated debate due to proposals for controversial border control measures which drove a wedge between Seehofer and German chancellor and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Angela Merkel.

Following a last-minute compromise reached by the two conservative sister parties to avert a collapse of the "grand coalition", the interior minister reiterated his desire on Tuesday to establish a "new border control regime" on the German-Austrian frontier.

"We will create transit centers from which asylum seekers will be directly deported to the responsible countries," the final document reads.

By referring to "transit centers", as opposed to "transfer centers", the interior minister hereby adopted a term which has so far met with resistance from the German Social Democrats (SPD) and could potentially reignite cabinet infighting. Seehofer recently threatened to resign unless Merkel's cabinet backed all of the measures listed in his "migration master plan".

The CSU leader emphasized on Tuesday that the proposals now unveiled in Berlin were created by the interior ministry prior to the latest emergency discussion between the CDU, CSU and SPD on the subject and hence did not constitute a "coalition plan" which had been agreed by the entire federal government. Nevertheless, he described the "migration master plan" as an "integral part" of a "urgently needed asylum policy U-turn" in Germany.

Seehofer told the press that he intended to clarify in the course of July exactly what kind of agreements could be signed with other European Union (EU) member states in order for transit centers to become operational on the German border. Seehofer admitted that such bilateral talks were likely to prove "difficult" but argued that there was a good chance they could succeed in the absence of a feasible joint European solution to challenges encountered during the continent's "refugee crisis".

The final "migration master plan" was published by Seehofer on the same day as the interior ministry released new official figures for asylum applications in Germany. The data provided further evidence of a longer-standing trend of decline as the number of applications fell by 16.4 percent to a total of 93,316 during the first six months of 2018.

The majority of applications were filed by Syrian nationals (22,520), followed by citizens of Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria. In total, there were 52,514 outstanding cases in June in which German authorities had not yet reached a decision on whether to award humanitarian residence to refugees.

More than one million asylum seekers arrived in Germany at the height of the "refugee crisis" between 2015 and 2016.