During a meeting on Wednesday night, according to the Deutsche Welle newspaper, Merkel and Seehofer failed to reach a compromise on the latter’s proposal for asylum seekers to be sent from Germany's border if they had already been refused asylum, or had applied for asylum elsewhere in the European Union. The reports followed a meeting between Merkel and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who jointly stated that protection of EU borders meant finding a common European response to combat undocumented migration.
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"I can hardly imagine that there will be a reasonable solution to the migration issue today or in the next few days. Angela Merkel has so far held on too strongly to a European solution. She cannot give this position up now without losing face," Springer said.
"The Vienna-Berlin-Rome axis would be a first and very important step to stop illegal migration to the EU. National border security and European border security are not mutually exclusive, but complement each other," he noted.
Europe has seen a major influx of immigrants and refugees since 2015. According to Europol, over 90 percent of migrants traveling to the European Union sought help of criminal groups to reach Europe. Germany is one of the preferred destinations for irregular migrants traveling to Europe, along with Sweden and the United Kingdom.
