REUTERS EU Commission plans to increase migration have been met with fury in Germany

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The EU is drawing up new laws which will unleash a fresh wave of migration and completely undermine attempts to bring the refugee crisis under control, according to furious Germany politicians. Under proposals put forward by the European Commission drastic changes will be made to the rules which govern who refugees that successfully make it to Europe can bring over to live with them. Rebellious members of Angela Merkel’s ruling party in Germany have already expressed dismay over the plans, branding them “unacceptable” and saying they will spark huge new numbers of migrants just when the refugee crisis is beginning to subside.

At the moment migrants are allowed to be reunited only with their immediate family, which means wives and children under the age of 18 who they already had before leaving their home country. The European Commission insisted today that the changes will only affect those asylum seekers already in Europe and would not extend the rights of those currently abroad to settle on the continent. A spokeswoman said: "The Commission's proposed modifications on family reunification concerns families already living in the EU, but in different member states. "They will not increase the rights to come to Europe for asylum seekers and their families living outside the EU and already covered by covered by the 2003 Family Reunification Directive which will remain unchanged."

REUTERS Jean-Claude Juncker's Commission wants to open the door to more migrant families

Wikipedia German MP Stephan Mayer blasted the plans as 'unacceptable'

But under the Commission plan the definition of family will be massively extended to include relationships formed during the journey to Europe. There had been fears that changes would mean that, if a couple of asylum seekers got married or had a child together in a refugee camp in Libya, only one would have to reach Europe for all of the family to be entitled to settle on the continent. Brussels bureaucrats insist the alterations are designed to “reflect the reality of migration today”, whereby many asylum seekers spend months on end in migrant camps before successfully making it to an EU country. But German politicians already rattled by record levels of immigration have said the proposals will undermine the EU’s migrant deal with Turkey, which is already wobbling following the country’s abortive coup.

GETTY Europe has been in the grip of an unprecedented migrant crisis

GETTY An EU deal with Turkey has reduced the flow of people arriving in Greece

The request of the EU Commission to broaden the concept of the core family is unacceptable Stephan Mayer, Bundestag home affairs spokesman

The agreement, under which all migrants arriving in Greece are deported back to Turkey, has seen a huge drop in the number of asylum seekers entering Europe since it was introduced in May. Germany, which has taken in more than a million migrants in the last 18 months, has especially benefitted from the shutting down of the Balkan route, and keeping numbers of new arrivals low is seen as key to Angela Merkel’s hopes of reelection next year. Stephan Mayer, the home affairs spokesman of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the Bundestag, said: "The request of the EU Commission to broaden the concept of the core family is unacceptable. “It does not exactly help decrease worries many EU member countries have about the EU…it will be corn to the mill of the populists in Europe.”

Predicting the number of asylum applications would rocket in the event of it being implemented, he added: "Additionally, all efforts to curb immigration that have been working so far, like the agreement with Turkey, would then be thwarted in retrospect.” The proposal was also savaged by fellow CDU heavyweight Armin Schuster, the internal affairs spokesman, who said: "We have to realise that we unfortunately still do not manage to comply with the Dublin rules. “It is inappropriate to even think about facilitating family reunification and extending it to large families". The Commission proposal states that the definition of “family members” should be “extended by including family relations which were formed after leaving the country of origin, but before arrival on the territory of the Member State”. It says this “reflects the reality of migration today where applicants often stay for long periods of time outside their country of origin before reaching the EU, such as in refugee camps”.

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