Germany's migrant crisis: SPD presents 5-point plan ahead of big decision - Deutsche Welle

On Sunday evening, Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes to reach agreement with rebellious Bavaria conservatives over migrant policy. But Social Democrats have also chimed in with a wish list of their own on the issue.

Angela Merkel's conservative CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CSU meet separately early on Sunday evening to discuss the agreements on migration she hammered out with EU partners late last week. If all goes well for the chancellor, it could mean the end of the impasse between the two conservative parties that threatened to bring down her government.

Amidst all the internecine fighting among conservatives, it has been easy to forget that there is also a third party involved: the Social Democrats. So the SPD took advantage of a rare gap in the headlines about the CDU-CSU quarrel to leak a five-point plan spelling out what it wants to see happen on the migrant issue. That document calls for

- more to be done to combat the reasons why people flee their home countries
- no unilateral action to turn people away at national borders within the EU
- more help for Italy and Greece, the two EU countries where migrants crossing the Mediterranean most frequently end up

- tighter controls of the EU's external borders
- a comprehensive German law governing immigration to the country and the German job market - Read More

Germany's migrant crisis: SPD presents 5-point plan ahead of big decision

Chancellor Angela Merkel unveils immigration plan to allies