Asylum seeker

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has proposed changes to make it easier to deport asylum-seekers who commit crimes following the sexual attacks on women commited on New Year’s in Cologne.

The attacks carried out by men of North African and Arab origin, according to witnesses, have questioned the migrant policy followed by German government.

Chancellor Angela Merkel on Jan. 9 backed a sharp toughening of expulsion rules for convicted refugees, saying that even those who have been given suspended sentences should be required to leave Germany.

Asylum-seekers could be deported if they're found to have participated in a string of New Year sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany's justice minister said Jan. 7.

Denmark has announced it is closing its border with Germany, daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.

The development is a reaction to Sweden's move, hours earlier, to introduce passport control with Denmark, the newspaper quotes the country's PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen.

The measures is in force "starting immediately".

From the beginning of the year until the end of November, nearly 19 000 people sought asylum in Bulgaria.

This becomes evident from the latest statistics of the State Agency for Refugees (DAB), daily Dnevnik informs.

For comparison, the total number of asylum-seekers in 2014 was 11 000.

Austria can't accept more than 100,000 migrants a year, the country's Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner has said.

"Around 90-100,000 - a lot more will simply not be possible," Reuters quoted Mitterlehner as telling ORF radio station on Monday.

According to estimates of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the number of people subject to forced displacement will exceed 60 million for the first  time in 2015.

This means that one in every 122 people in the world has been forced to flee their home.

No-one should ever be detained for the sole reason that he or she is an asylum seeker, said speakers in a debate on Wednesday evening. To apply for asylum is a basic human right, and detention can only be used as a measure of last resort, they insisted.

Finland’s government launched measures to tighten its immigration policy according to which  asylum seekers will be asked to work for free and to acknowledge a “national curriculum” on Finnish culture and society.

The government will also create an information package on Finnish culture and society stressing the rights of women and children.

In an article published at the website of Human Rights Watch on Monday, a researcher for Eastern Europe and Western Balkans, described the harsh conditions asylum seekers are faced with in Dimitrovgrad, a town in southeastern Serbia, at the border with Bulgaria.