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REFUGEE CRISIS

IMMIGRATION

EU leaders to meet for emergency refugee talks

European Council President Donald Tusk has called an emergency summit of European leaders to try and tackle the refugee crisis, it was announced on Thursday.

EU leaders to meet for emergency refugee talks
EU and German flags outside the Interior Ministry. Photo: DPA

Tusk made the announcement through Twitter and set the date for Wednesday 23rd of September at 6 pm.

The ex-Polish premier consented to a demand made by Chancellor Angela Merkel after a meeting of EU interior ministers on Monday failed to reach an agreement on relocating 120,000 around EU member states.

On Tuesday Merkel called for a special summit saying “it is a problem for the entire European Union and therefore we argued for a special EU summit to be held next week. Donald Tusk will look into that.”

At the meeting on Monday in Brussels ministers could only agree on quotas for a more modest relocation of 40,000 refugees from Italy and Greece which was proposed in May.

Germany had reacted to the failure furiously with vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel saying Europe had disgraced itself, while Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere threatened financial punishment against the eastern European states who had blocked a resolution.

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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