At issue are the Dublin regulations, which govern how EU member states examine asylum applications. Under those rules, the country where the migrant entered is legally supposed to deal with the claim. Germany suspended the rule in 2015, sending hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to its borders. This had the effect of European countries buckling under the strain of the migrants marching through their territory en route to Germany. Under Seehofer’s “master plan” on migration, migrants who have already registered in an another EU country would be turned away at the border. Merkel fears that if every European country does the same thing—and there are indications that many will—then Greece and Italy, especially, will be overwhelmed by migrants. Hence, her support for an EU-wide solution to the crisis. Migration has remained a contentious matter in Germany and across Europe, with the Syrian civil war spawning the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War II. Although the vast majority of refugees live in the countries surrounding Syria, the numbers entering Germany soared in 2015 after Merkel announced her open-door policy toward Syrian refugees. The following year, more than 1 million refugees entered Germany, mostly through Bavaria. Initial enthusiasm for the newcomers gave way to anger and fear amid the rising numbers, as well as reports, sometimes erroneous, of crimes, including rape, committed by migrants. Statistics do not bear out those fears. In fact, both crime and asylum applications in Europe are at a low, and overall crime in Germany is at its lowest level since 1992. It fell 10 percent in 2017 compared to the previous year. Crimes committed by non-Germans fell 22 percent in that period, official data show. In addition, the number of people claiming asylum in Germany, and across Europe, have both declined dramatically. The EU’s asylum office said Monday that asylum applications declined by almost half in 2017 across Europe from the prior year; in Germany, the number of applications dropped by more than two-thirds over the same period. Yet even with the decline, more than 200,000 people sought asylum in Germany in 2017, down from a high of 890,000 in 2015. The backlog remains high, however. About 443,640 people are still awaiting a decision on their asylum application in Germany. (The number for all of Europe is 954,100.) At least part of that decline can be attributed to an agreement EU countries worked out with Turkey and Libya, which, in exchange for money, tightened restrictions on migrants fleeing to Europe from their territory. Still, those numbers are unlikely to provide consolation to Germans reading news reports about crimes committed by asylum seekers such as the Iraqi man accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in western Germany, or of self-professed ISIS members who have carried out attacks inside the country. Nor are the data about a decline is asylum seekers likely to dissuade them from their belief that Germany’s asylum process is, itself, flawed. The scandal at Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, in which a regional office is said to have improperly approved the asylum applications of nearly 1,000 people between 2013 and 2016, has also shaken faith in the system. Seehofer fired the agency’s head last week over the scandal.<doc-sep>President Donald Trump says Germany’s official crime statistics are wrong: Crime in Germany is up a whopping 10 percent since the country implemented its open-door policy toward refugees, he tweeted Tuesday. To be clear, as Vox’s Matt Yglesias pointed out Monday, Germany’s overall crime rate has fallen to its lowest level since 1992, according to recently released statistics from the country’s interior minister. So where did Trump get that 10 percent statistic? Crime in Germany is up 10% plus (officials do not want to report these crimes) since migrants were accepted. Others countries are even worse. Be smart America! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2018 The White House didn’t respond to a request for clarification, but our best guess is a German government-sponsored report from January that showed violent crime increased 10 percent between 2015 and 2016 in the German state of Lower Saxony. The study attributed 90 percent of the increase in violent crime to young male refugees. However, unlike Trump, who is using this statistic to argue against accepting refugees altogether, this study suggested language classes, sports, and job opportunities for these migrants. It also said these refugees should be reunited with their families. This is the second time this week Trump has invoked crime in Germany as a way to sow fear around asylum seekers and refugees in the United States. On Monday, he said crime in Germany is “way up,” and berated Chancellor Angela Merkel for her open-door policy for refugees. As his administration comes under intense scrutiny for implementing a policy that separates families at the border, Trump also said Monday that he would not allow the United States to become a “migrant camp” or “refugee holding facility,” like some of its European allies. Needless to say, Trump’s comments don’t paint an accurate picture of refugees. Trump is cherry-picking crime reports to paint a scary narrative around refugees Put simply: Trump’s claim about Germany’s crime statistics isn’t accurate. The study Trump is likely referring to is in the context of an increase in violent crime in Germany between 2014 and 2016. However, the most recent crime numbers, which Germany’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, announced in January, show a nearly 10 percent drop in total crime over 2017. Violent crimes also modestly decreased, by 2.4 percent, between 2016 and 2017. The rate of violent crimes are still higher than they were in 2014, but they are not up by 10 percent “plus” as Trump said. In other words, violent crime did increase in Germany during the initial influx of migrants, but that rate is now on the decline. The study that found the 10 percent increase in violent crime in Lower Saxony noted something else: Migrants from war zones like Syria, who have stronger chances of getting asylum in Germany, were much less likely than other migrants to commit violent crimes. The study also said migrant crimes were more likely to be reported. There’s no question that Europe is at a crossroads with the continued rush of refugees — a crisis that again made headlines this month when Italy’s interior minister turned away two rescue boats carrying 620 refugees, saying the country would no longer be “complicit in the business of illegal immigration.” Meanwhile, Merkel is currently facing fierce political backlash from Germany’s anti-immigration right wing for settling almost a million refugees in the country. Trump’s policies have long echoed this far-right anti-refugee ideology. His administration has made a concerted effort to sow terror around refugees and asylum seekers, stoking fear that violent criminals may be trying to abuse the immigration system. On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reaffirmed this worldview, saying the US media doesn’t focus enough on the crimes perpetrated by asylum seekers. “The narratives we don’t see are the narratives of the crime, of the opioids, of the smugglers, of who are people killed by gang members, of American children who are recruited and then when they lose the drugs, they’re tased and beaten,” Nielsen told the press Monday. It’s clear that’s the narrative Trump is focused on.<doc-sep>MAINZ, Germany — President Donald Trump took a swipe at German leader Angela Merkel over border controls Monday by wrongly stating that crime was rising in her country because of mass migration. "We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!" he wrote in a string of tweets defending White House policies regarding the U.S.-Mexico border. His comment comes a week after he stoked tensions with other leaders at the G-7 summit, including the German chancellor who called his behavior "depressing." German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to President Donald Trump at the G-7 summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, on June 9. Jesco Denze / Bundesregierung via EPA Trump tweeted: “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!” Under Merkel, Germany opened its borders to welcome around 1 million asylum-seekers in 2015. At times more than 10,000 people were arriving daily in the country, which had a population of around 81 million. But according to official figures released last month, Germany last year recorded its lowest number of criminal offenses since 1992, with figures showing the crime rate is falling more quickly among non-German suspects. On its website, German mass-circulation Bild newspaper ran the headline, "Trump meddles in asylum dispute” and wrote, "That a U.S. president so massively weighs in on the domestic debate of a western ally is highly unusual.” Trump's comment came moments after Merkel sidestepped a major political crisis by securing more time to resolve a coalition rift over border controls. The chancellor said an agreement between her Christian Democrats (CDU) and Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) on tighter immigration rules gave her the support she needed to seek bilateral agreements ahead of a European Union summit on June 28. Merkel is caught in a deadlock with her own interior minister, Horst Seehofer, whose CSU wants to turn away migrants already registered in other E.U. states. She believes that would unfairly burden southern European countries, including Italy and Greece. Seehofer had threatened to defy her, raising the prospect that she would be too weakened to continue as German leader. German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives at a press conference in Berlin on Monday. Clemens Bilan / EPA However, Seehofer on Monday said he would only implement the policy if Merkel failed to reach a deal with other E.U. states at the summit — effectively giving her two weeks to find a fix. "We wish the chancellor much luck," Seehofer told reporters. He would not be drawn into whether Merkel would fire him if he pushed ahead with his plan to turn away some migrants at the German border should she be unable to reach a European deal. "I won't talk about that today. Step by step," he said. “In July, if there is no result at European level, we must implement this.” Merkel, who is not yet 100 days into her fourth term, cobbled together a coalition three months ago after her CDU party suffered a setback in elections. The CSU, which faces regional elections in October, fears its decades-old control of Bavaria could be challenged by the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party if it does not tighten policy toward migrants. Merkel's open-door migrant policy is widely blamed for the rise of the right-wing AfD, now the main opposition party in Germany's Parliament. More than 1.6 million migrants, including many fleeing wars in the Middle East, have arrived in Germany since 2014. Andy Eckardt reported from Mainz, and Alastair Jamieson from London.<doc-sep>Young males are more likely to be involved in crime than any other group and the report points out that recent migrants are both younger than the average age of the population and more likely to be male.<doc-sep>
BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel coolly rebuffed U.S. President Donald Trump’s assertion that migrants were behind a surge in crime in Germany, pointing to statistics that showed crime was in fact down. FILE PHOTO: Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel talks with U.S. President Donald Trump at a family photo session with the leaders of the G-7 summit in Charlevoix, Quebec, Canada, June 8, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo “My answer is that the interior minister presented the crime statistics a short while ago and they speak for themselves,” Merkel told a news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron when asked about a recent flurry of tweets from Trump. “We are seeing a slight positive development. We must always do more to fight criminality. But they were very encouraging numbers,” she added. Statistics published last month showed that overall crime fell 9.6 percent in Germany in 2017. A government-sponsored study published in January showed that violent crime had risen about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, attributing more than 90 percent of the rise to young male asylum seekers. Merkel has faced opposition at home for a decision in 2015 to open Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly Middle Eastern asylum seekers who crossed by sea from Turkey to Greece and overland through the Balkans. That route has since been closed under a 2016 deal Turkey-EU deal. In a tweet on Monday, Trump said that the people of Germany were turning against their leadership because of loose migration policies. “Crime is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture,” Trump said. He followed that up with a tweet on Tuesday that said: “Crime in Germany is up 10% plus (officials do not want to report these crimes) since migrants were accepted. Others countries are even worse. Be smart America!” His tweets come amid a storm of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans for his administration’s policy of detaining immigrant children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said it was “not the American president’s role to speculate - as he did yesterday - that the German people would march towards the chancellery to remove Mrs Merkel.” “Mr Trump may govern the USA, he doesn’t govern Europe,” Juncker added.