Germany is secretly forming an alliance of European countries that will turn away asylum seekers at their borders, it has been reported.
Friedrich Merz, the country’s next chancellor, has begun informal talks with neighbours France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland, according to The Telegraph.
While precise details of the plan remain unclear, Merz is under pressure to cut the number of refugee arrivals into Germany.
Concerns about immigration have been pushed to the forefront of German politics, heightened by a series of attacks carried out by Islamists and the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The AfD polled 20.8 per cent in the February elections, making them the second largest party in German.
Ahead of the elections in February, Merz, 69, the leader of the victorious Christian Democratic Union (CDU), promised to stop all illegal migration at Germany’s land borders.
While the new policy is still being worked out, he is said to have been strongly influenced by an initiative presented by Polish prime minister Donald Tusk in January.
In a speech upon taking the reins of the EU council, Tusk called illegal immigration ‘a threat to the security and territorial integrity of the entire union’ and suggested the need to use ‘all available leverage’ to force nations external to the US to take back their citizens.
Hellbound and Down 