The Star reports:

“Germany may receive as many as 800,000 people fleeing war and poverty this year, about quadruple last year’s number, as Europe’s refugee crisis forces policy-makers to shift attention from Greece’s debt woes.

With Syria and the Balkans accounting for most of the increase, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government on Wednesday almost doubled its estimate of the inflow of asylum seekers and refugees compared with projections in May. All European Union countries need to help stem the crisis, said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, who presented the numbers.

“We have to accept this challenge and master it together,” de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin. “We have to be prepared for high refugee numbers for several years.”

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Almost 340,000 migrants tried to enter the European Union in July compared to 123,500 a year earlier, the EU border- management agency Frontex said Tuesday. The biggest number was reported in the Aegean Sea, mainly on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Kos.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy with about 16 per cent of the EU’s population, can’t take in 40 per cent of asylum seekers arriving in the 28-nation bloc indefinitely, de Maiziere said.”