Politics of Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday defended the long period of primary surplus targets for Greece, saying they were not a sign of lacking trust in the crisis-hit country but a necessary condition to reduce the level of debt.

"It's a good compromise," Merkel was quoted as saying during a press conference.

It would be a big mistake for Greece to try to change the adjustment program that has been agreed with its lenders, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told the economic and monetary committee of the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday.

Even as Germany's interior minister Horst Seehofer threatens the launch of mass returns of migrants if bilateral agreements are not achieved, German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen has suggested that such an accord with Greece may be signed by the end of the month.

Amid a widening rift in the European Union over how to manage the bloc's refugee problem, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer on Thursday separately called for more migrant returns to Greece and Italy. 

Her open-arms stance is now history, writes DW editor-in-chief Ines Pohl.

This includes the nomalization of the relations between Belgrade and Pristina, says professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade Dragan Djukanovic.

German Chancellor and leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Angela Merkel (C), the Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (L) and German Agriculture minister and Deputy Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Julia Kloeckner look on prior to a party leadership meeting at the CDU headquarters in Berlin, on July 2, 2018.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the migration deal clinched at an EU summit on Friday, describing it as a decisive step in the direction of a common European asylum policy.

"What we achieved here together is perhaps more than I had expected," Merkel told reporters at the end of the summit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on June 28 called on EU member states to agree this week to allocate an additional 3 billion euros in assistance for Syrian refugees in Turkey.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel walks past Alexander Gauland (L), parliamentary group co-leader of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), at the beginning of a session at the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) on June 28, 2018 in Berlin. AFP PHOTO / John MACDOUGALL