Germany, Europe’s largest and richest economy, has been a magnet for many people leaving poverty and conflict in Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Africa. Police said around 13,000 migrants arrived in Munich alone on Saturday, and another 1,400 on Sunday morning.
In an interview with German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, de Maiziere said refugees given protection in Europe should accept that they will be distributed across the bloc.
“We can’t allow refugees to freely choose where they want to stay - that’s not the case anywhere in the world,” he said. “It also can’t be our duty to pay benefits laid out in German law to refugees who have been allocated to one EU country and then come to Germany anyway,” he added.
Tensions are rising in Germany, where states have complained about the growing burden of coping with Europe’s worst refugee crisis in decades.
German EU Commissioner Guenter Oettinger told newspaper Welt am Sonntag that Germany should reduce benefits for asylum seekers to reduce the numbers coming across its borders.
“Payments to asylum seekers in Germany need to be adjusted so that there is a certain rapprochement to the payments in other EU countries,” he said.
“We need a certain harmonisation of the cash benefits for asylum seekers in Europe because if the[re is a] difference within the EU, it could create the wrong incentives,” he added.
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