Angela Merkel warned on Thursday that the future of the European Union hinged on whether it could find answers to the “vital questions” posed by migration, as she received muted support from some of her fellow leaders arriving for a crucial summit likely to determine whether her fraying coalition government survives.

Addressing the Bundestag before heading to Brussels, the German chancellor said European leaders should find a solution to asylum challenges “by allowing ourselves to be guided by values and rooting for multilateralism rather than unilateralism”.

If the heads of government gathering in Brussels failed to do so, Merkel warned, they risked creating a situation where “no one believes in the value system that has made us so strong”.

Migration is dominating the EU summit in Brussels, whose agenda has been dubbed by some insiders as Saving Private Merkel.



Germany’s coalition government is under immense strain, after the hardline interior minister Horst Seehofer threatened to turn away any asylum claimants already registered in another EU country, unless Merkel came up with a solution by 1 July.



Merkel fears that if Germany closes its borders it will set off a chain reaction that destroys Europe’s border-free travel zone, regarded by the EU as one of its greatest achievements, as well as a lynchpin of jobs and prosperity.

The leaders of Spain, Finland and Luxembourg expressed support for Germany to curtail “secondary movement” of migrants who have made an asylum claim in another European country.

“I understand when Germany says ‘why do we have to deal with everything?’” said Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel. The Spanish PM, Pedro Sánchez, said European solidarity on migration was vital, “especially with Germany which is now suffering a political crisis”.

But Italy threatened to veto the summit agreement if it did not meet Rome’s demands for more help managing arrivals to its shores.

European leaders are at odds over how to reform EU asylum policy, which is based on the principle that the first country of arrival takes responsibility for asylum claims. The system has put frontline states Italy, Greece and Spain under immense pressure, while Germany faces “secondary movements” of migrants, who may be seeking to speed up asylum claims.

Greece said it was ready to help Germany by taking back asylum seekers, a political boost for Merkel, but one that does not solve her problem, as the numbers returning to Greece would be small.

Merkel also needs help from Italy, but its new populist government wants European countries to share the burden of looking after the migrants arriving on its shores. Since Italy began turning away migrant rescue boats from its ports, Europe’s divisions over migration have burst into the open.

After days adrift in international waters, the German NGO ship Lifeline, carrying 234 people, has now been allowed to dock at Malta. The Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat, announced that nine European countries, including Malta, had agreed to accept people rescued at sea.

European leaders are likely to sidestep the divisive issue of refugee quotas that has roiled the EU since 2015, when Brussels attempted to force through mandatory quotas.



Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who was recently re-elected after a harsh anti-immigration campaign, made clear his country would not be welcoming refugees. In typically uncompromising language, he said the EU had to stop migrants arriving. “The invasion should be stopped and to stop the invasion means to have a strong border.”

Faultlines over managing internal migration means EU leaders will focus on action to prevent migrants arriving in Europe, a policy that commands consensus. EU leaders are expected to call for migrant processing centres to be set up in north African countries, but details remain sketchy.

The rightwing Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said that “being rescued in the Mediterranean must not automatically become a ticket to central Europe”.

The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said the EU needed to come to a “Turkey-like agreement” with African countries, a reference to the 2016 migration pact with Ankara that led to a 97% fall in arrivals across the eastern Mediterranean.

“We are not ready for the next crisis,” Rutte said, adding that it was not right that countries such as Spain and Italy were left to shoulder all the burden. The EU needed to decide “how to kill the business model of cynical boat smugglers, people dying in the migration sea”, he said.

Questions persist about the proposed migrant processing centres, which no African country has agreed to host. The EU will call for further study of “regional disembarkation platforms”, a vague term for a scheme that EU officials admit is lacking detail.

Merkel, the architect of the EU-Turkey deal, told German MPs that it was time to seek conversations with African states about deals to return migrants “who absolutely have no right to stay”, modelled on the 2016 agreement.

In a 26-minute speech to the German parliament, notably in Seehofer’s absence, Merkel sounded a note of pessimism about the chances of striking an EU-wide deal on migration.



Throughout Merkel’s speech she was heckled by delegates of the rightwing populist party Alternative für Deutschland. At one point she interrupted her own speech with the words: “My God, seriously now.”