At least 19 die at sea as Merkel fails to solve Germany’s dispute on refugee policy

At least 19 migrants seeking to reach Europe drowned off Greece on Sunday as political talks in Germany failed to produce a consensus on how to handle the influx. In three separate incidents boats making hazardous ocean crossings capsized leaving at least six children dead. Despite the increasingly perilous conditions at sea at the onset of winter, refugees from Syria and other war-torn regions continue to pile into boats heading west, for fear that Europe is about to close its borders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the emergency talks after her Bavarian ally, Horst Seehofer of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party, threatened her with unspecified consequences if she did not take action to limit the number of newcomers arriving into Germany by Sunday.

Several points… still need to be resolved including the issue of ‘transit zones’.

Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, referring to a proposal to create airport-style processing points on Germany’s borders to allow would-be refugees who do not fulfill asylum criteria to be moved out quickly.

While most Germans initially backed Merkel’s open-doors policy for those fleeing war and persecution, a growing backlash has piled pressure on the chancellor and exposed rifts within her conservative bloc. The Christian Democratic Union and CSU sought to paper over their divisions with a joint statement on Sunday which proposed to suspend for two years the possibility for refugees given “subsidiary protection” –a status that falls short of full asylum – to have family members join them in Germany. The document did not broach the thorny issue of the “transit zones”, which the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has rejected as too restrictive. More talks were planned for Thursday, Seibert said

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