Free Republic

Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany wants friendly ties with Britain but won’t drop its insistence that London can only enjoy full access to the European Union’s internal market if it allows free immigration of EU citizens. […] Merkel argues that making concessions on free labor movement would create a dangerous free-for-all in the EU. She said Saturday that, although Britain is dear to Europe and she regrets its decision to leave the bloc, “we cannot work toward ultimately putting into question the whole European Union.” …

Norwegian Justice Minister Anders Anundsen said on Thursday that the EU must allow Norway to continue with its temporary border controls for as long as the nation deems them necessary. When the ministers of justice of the EU and the four EFTA countries meet in Luxembourg on Thursday, Anundsen will ask for the green light to keep Norway’s controls in place. “I think it’s important that we have the opportunity to continue with internal border controls as long as we believe it is necessary,” Anundsen said. Norway is one of five Schengen countries that have introduced border controls in the...

A new microcensus shows that more than one-fifth of all Germans have some sort of “immigrant background” — a record high for the Bundesrepublik. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported on Friday that 17.1 million people out of a population of 81.4 million last year had some kind of immigration background. This included people who had immigrated to Germany themselves, people with at least one parent who wasn’t a German national, and ethnic Germans or their children who had re-settled in Germany. Destatis said that this was a record level for Germany with an increase of 4.4 percent over 2014....

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats fell to third place in a state election on Sunday behind the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, TV exit polls showed. In a stinging defeat for Merkel one year ahead of parliamentary elections, the upstart AfD won 21 percent of the vote in their first election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state by campaigning hard against the chancellor's policies on refugees, according to an exit poll by the ARD TV network.

A year ago Germany showed itself as a country offering help. Security wasn’t an issue, but today it’s clear that terrorists have misused refugee routes and extremists are recruiting members amongst refugees. The terrorist attacks in Würzburg and Ansbach in July were not related to the arrival of so many refugees in the autumn of 2015. Both assailants were already living in Bavaria. But the fact that people, who had been taken in by Germany, then took an ax and a bomb, respectively, and turned on those who had offered help, has highlighted the disturbing side of migration. Many now...

A group of migrants and asylum-seekers who set off two days ago on a protest march toward Hungary reached the European Union-member state’s border on Sunday, saying they want to ask European leaders why it is closed for the thousands fleeing war and poverty. Walking slowly under a Serbian police escort, several dozen people approached Serbia’s border with Hungary in a bid to protest Budapest’s decision to keep it shut for most asylum-seekers, which has left several thousand people stranded in Serbia. “We all are humans and we are all here because we have lots of problems in our own...

Greenpeace charged on Monday that a massive US-EU trade deal would place corporate interests above the environment and consumer safety, as it released classified documents from the negotiations. […] Greenpeace said the papers show, for example, that the US wants to be able to scrap existing EU rules in areas such as food labeling or approval of dangerous chemicals if it they spell barriers to free trade. “TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business,” the group argued, having also projected an image of a classified text passage onto the façade of Berlin’s parliament building....

Germans appear to be losing faith in the idea of a borderless Europe, as the results of a poll published on Tuesday showed that two-thirds would prefer the government to end the Schengen free-movement zone. The survey by French pollsters IFOP found that while 60 percent of Italians were against Schengen — an agreement which allows people to travel within the EU without showing a passport — across the Rhine the number of French people wanting borders closed was as high as 72 percent. It shows that the terror attacks in Brussels and Paris “stoked the feeling that things have...

President Barack Obama is pledging that the U.S. will “do whatever is necessary” to help Belgium bring to justice the perpetrators of terrorist attacks that killed more than two dozen people at the airport and a subway station. He says the U.S. stands “in solidarity” with Belgium in condemning “these outrageous attacks against innocent people.” …

EU countries should record data on visitors entering the visa-free area in Europe, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has said. “We want to know who is coming,” he added. The new travel registry would boost the security of European nations, de Maizière said in (an) interview (with) “Die Welt” published on Saturday. Specifically, the interior minister referred to the so-called Schengen visa-free zone, which currently incorporates 28 European countries, most of which are EU members. According to de Maizière, officials need to gather data on the visitors from countries outside the Schengen zone. …

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has criticized leading U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a right-wing populist whose political views pose a threat to peace and prosperity. The comments by Gabriel, economy minister and leader of the Social Democrats, are the clearest sign yet that ruling politicians in Europe are increasingly worried about the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections. "Whether Donald Trump, Marine le Pen or Geert Wilders - all these right-wing populists are not only a threat to peace and social cohesion, but also to economic development," Gabriel told Welt am Sonntag newspaper in an interview published...

European nationals who move to Germany cannot expect to receive social welfare for the first three months of their stay in Germany, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Thursday. This exclusion can be applied universally to all EU citizens, meaning the German welfare center will not need to consider each application for benefits individually, the EU's highest court ruled. The point of contention was a rule in the German social law which excludes all non-German EU citizens from picking up unemployment benefits or child support benefits during the first three months in Germany. ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday criticized an eastern European proposal to close the Balkans refugee route and vowed to push for a plan with Turkey to reduce the influx, at an EU summit. Merkel, under heavy pressure at home to reduce arrivals, supports a plan under which transit country Turkey would seal its borders and then fly refugees to Europe where they would be settled under an EU quota system. However, most countries in the European Union have shown little enthusiasm for the idea, and the so-called Visegrad Four - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary - have openly...

The former head of the "Christian Social Union" party and former Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber delivered an ultimatum to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, demanding reduce the number of refugees in the country until the end of March, 2016. According to Oxu.Az, Stoiber called for the permanent closure of the refugee border with Austria. ...

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says an EU-wide tax on petrol could help finance refugees and strengthen the bloc's borders. His comments come after sexual assaults by foreigners in Cologne caused uproar. "I've said if the funds in the national budgets and the European budget are insufficient, then let us agree to set up, for instance, a tax on a certain amount on each liter of gasoline," Schaeuble told the "Sueddeustche Zeitung" daily. "We have to secure Schengen's external borders now. The solution to these problems must not founder due to a limitation of funds," he added. Schaeuble went on to...

The conservative state government in Bavaria has called on Berlin to allow the Free State's own police to secure its border with Austria, saying that federal officers are overwhelmed. But Bavarian interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on Sunday that the federal government had rejected the request from Munich. "I can't understand at all," Herrmann told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "That we are not carrying out reliable controls, even five weeks after the Paris attacks and despite the blatant danger, is a sign of weakness." ...

The European Commission has unveiled a controversial plan for a European border guard agency that would deploy to member states overwhelmed by migrants -- whether those nations want it or not. The new agency would have a standing reserve force of at least 1,500 border guards that could be sent to EU border chokepoints within three days, rather than relying on time-consuming calls to nations for volunteers during emergencies. [...] The plan is contentious because it requires countries to surrender some of their sovereignty -- something many have viscerally opposed so far -- and it's unclear whether the scheme will...

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday ahead of an EU summit that Germany would not give in to Britain's demands for EU reform if it meant sacrificing achievements made by the bloc on integration. "On the one hand, we want to reach an agreement with the British government," Merkel told MPs in an address to the Bundestag (German parliament) on Wednesday. "On the other hand, we will not put the fundamental achievements of European integration in question, in particular, the principles of freedom of movement and non-discrimination of European citizens," the Chancellor added. ...

The European Union is considering a plan to introduce a permanent external border control force that could be deployed if it deems that a member state is in need of help to police its frontiers even without the EU country's consent, the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal reported Friday (11 December). The migration crisis has exposed the bloc's leaky external border control, and the Paris attacks, where two suspects entered the EU posing as refugees, added to the anxieties about external border checks. There have been repeated calls by EU leaders to step up efforts to police external...

The fight against ISIS will not be won with military action but by bringing an end to the civil war in Syria around the negotiating table, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Monday. "We stand before the dilemma that the battle against ISIS must be continued, but everyone also knows that in the end the battle against terrorism can't be won militarily," Steinmeier told journalists as he arrived at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels. "I personally remain convinced that... we will only move forward in the Middle East if, above all, we work energetically on those questions which...