When authorities told Angela Merkel how the border could be quickly “sealed off” at the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, the Chancellor shook her head and vowed to never “build any fences”, a former minister has revealed.
In an interview with Der Spiegel, globalist former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel described how the Chancellor’s negative reaction to learning about border protection options showed that “deep conviction” drove her insistence that Germany’s border remains open to a migrant influx of more than a million people.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) figure recalled how he and Merkel had sat and listened as the then-Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and the head of the Federal Police, Dieter Romann had explained about border controls and “how quickly everything can be sealed off”.
“I can still remember her shaking her head during these presentations, I remember thinking, this isn’t a superficial position, it was deep inside her,” he said.
“She said to me, verbatim: ‘But promise me one thing, Mr. Gabriel, the two of us won’t build any fences’,” he told Der Spiegel, adding that he had “great respect for her to this day” for the open borders stance.
“To this day, I believe Angela Merkel’s moral impulse to not close the borders was correct,” Gabriel said, claiming “in hindsight” he believed “that there wasn’t any alternative”.
Reports last year, which the interior ministry would neither confirm or deny, alleged that Merkel and her ministers agreed to close the border with Austria at the height of the migrant crisis in September 2015, but then changed her mind, fearing televised scenes of authorities turning away “refugees”.
The Chancellor’s ideological opposition to protecting national frontiers almost caused her coalition to collapse over the summer, as she rejected the Christian Social Union’s demands to allow police to turn asylum seekers who had already registered in another country away at the border.
Repeatedly denouncing opposition to mass migration and pronouncing that walls “don’t work” while appearing at events across the globe, it is not just Germany whose borders Merkel demands remain open.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has warned that EU plans backed by the German leader to increase the size and scope of Brussels’ border force, Frontex, pose a serious threat to the continent.
Calling on EU nations to embrace legislation presented by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker earlier this month, Merkel admitted the proposals required “that the countries with an external border must give up some of their national responsibilities”.
Orbán sounded the alarm over the law, telling national radio: “Angela Merkel has said that the plan is that part of the border control should be handed over from frontier states to Brussels.”
“Because they were unable to persuade Hungary to let migrants in, the plan now is that they will take border protection rights away from us,” he said, adding that Brussels wants “to take away from us the keys to the gate” as EU figures were unhappy that the Visegrad nation’s border fences had cut illegal immigration by more than 99 percent.
As European leaders debate how to tackle illegal immigration, Merkel says the border must stay open and that migrants are shared out across the EU, insisting that the only way the bloc can tackle the problem is by sending vast sums of money to Africa.
But the Chancellor’s much-touted Marshall Plan for Africa — which also has the backing of globalist financier George Soros — is certain to boost rather than stem the migrant flow, as the Economist noted last week when it pointed to the fact all data on the subject shows that “economic development will raise migration numbers”.