Berlin makes proposals to reduce number of asylum seekers

By Alexander Ratz and Sarah Marsh

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany's government presented a plan on Tuesday to implement more rigorously European rules on asylum that would see more people turned away at its borders, a day after it announced it would start carrying out controls on all its land borders.

The proposals include detaining asylum seekers while authorities determine whether Germany is responsible for processing their case with the help of Europe's shared fingerprint database, Eurodac, amongst other tools, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told a news conference.

"We want people whose asylum procedure is the responsibility of another EU country to be sent back there," Faeser said.

The measures reflect Germany's hardening stance on immigration in the wake of high arrivals of asylum seekers from both the Middle East and Ukraine which could strain relations with other European states.

"We will approach our European partners at a high political level to ensure that they give their approval for readmission to the respective countries more quickly so that the European rules are complied with," Faeser said.

Yet Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier on Tuesday already criticised Germany's tighter border controls, calling for urgent consultations with other affected countries and more support for Warsaw's own immigration policies.

In a televised debate ahead of Austria's parliamentary election on Sept. 29, Chancellor Karl Nehammer told national broadcaster ORF that if Germany introduced measures to send more immigrants back across their shared border, Austria would do the same, sending more people eastwards towards the Balkans.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left government elaborated the proposals for faster rejections at the borders as part of talks with the opposition conservatives which fell apart on Tuesday with the latter complaining they did not go far enough.

Scholz's three-way coalition does not necessarily need approval from the conservatives, however, to push through the proposals, which they also want to discuss with regional governments before implementing.

Berlin says it must tackle irregular migration due to overburdened public services and to protect the public from threats such as Islamist extremism.

Recent deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers have stoked concerns over immigration. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a knife attack in the western city of Solingen that killed three people in August.

Mainstream parties are seeking to seize the initiative away from the far-right Alternative for Germany that has tapped into concerns about migration and seen support surge in recent years.

The AfD became the first far-right party in Germany to win a state election since World War Two in Thuringia on Sept. 1.

Marcus Engler at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research said, however, the new proposals would likely have limited impact given asylum seekers would likely find ways around them, and other EU countries did not appear willing to accept asylum seekers back.

(Reporting by Alexander Ratz; additional writing by Tom SimsAdditional reporting by Francois Murphy in ViennaEditing by Gareth Jones and Sandra Maler)