German foreign minister warns against going alone in migration debate

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has warned against jeopardizing a delicate EU-wide compromise on asylum policy by adopting conservative opposition demands for turning back migrants at the German border.

After years of difficult EU negotiations, the German government had done everything it could "to get a common European asylum system off the ground in Europe," Baerbock said on Monday, referring to a deal to overhaul the Common European Asylum System (CEAS).

The centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) have demanded that German border police refuse entry to migrants trying to cross into Germany from neighbouring EU countries.

But Baerbock, a Green, contended that such policies need to be negotiated with other EU countries and can't be implemented unilaterally by Berlin.

Germans should "not allow ourselves to be driven crazy by those who are now deluding us into believing that the nation state could better regulate something in Europe on its own," she said in remarks to a conference for ambassadors hosted by the German Foreign Office.

New consultations between the German government, political opposition and leaders from Germany's 16 federal states on migration issues could take place this Tuesday in Berlin.

Long-standing debates over how to handle migrants seeking asylum in Germany have intensified after a deadly knife attack earlier this month in the western German city of Solingen.

The suspected attacker, a Syrian citizen, had evaded an order to be deported from Germany to Bulgaria, where he first entered the EU.

EU rules generally require asylum-seeking migrants to have claims processed in the first EU country they entered.

The reform deal for the EU's CEAS rules provides for the establishment of asylum centres at the EU's external borders, where officials could consider asylum claims from people from countries with low asylum recognition rates.