Merkel Migration Deal’s Domino Effect

• Merkel Migration Deal’s Domino Effect
  by JACOPO BARIGAZZI AND MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG, 7/3/18, https://www.politico.eu/
  Austria and Italy threaten border controls if Berlin goes ahead with chancellor’s plan. Angela Merkel struck a deal on migration that saved her own skin but threw the EU into disarray.
  –
  Within hours of the German chancellor announcing that she and her harshest domestic critic on migration — Interior Minister Horst Seehofer — had reached a compromise to end a standoff that threatened to bring down the government, her neighbors were up in arms.
  –
  Austria and Italy said they plan to reintroduce border controls if Berlin goes ahead with plans to establish so-called transit zones along Germany’s southern border to allow for accelerated deportations of refugees not entitled to seek asylum in the country.
  –
  If they do so, it would put the survival of the EU’s cherished Schengen area of border-free travel at risk. “Should this agreement thus become the German government’s position, we feel compelled to take action … and the federal government is therefore prepared to take special measures to protect our southern borders,” said Austria’s leaders — Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, the latter two from the far-right Freedom Party — in a statement Tuesday.
  –
  Diplomats said that Merkel’s move could trigger internal border closures across the bloc.
  –
  read more.

end