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.