Berlin hits out at EU’s ‘complete failure’ to protect its borders

Migrants sleep at the central station on September 12, 2015 in Munich, southern Germany. Munich is at the limit of its capacity to welcome refugees arriving en masse in Germany, police warned Sunday, a day after 12,200 asylum-seekers reached the city. AFP PHOTO / PHILIPP GUELLAND

BERLIN, Germany — Germany’s transport minister on Sunday hit out at the “complete failure” of the European Union to protect its external borders, as he called for measures to halt a record migrant influx.

“Effective measures are necessary now to stop the influx. That includes help for countries from where refugees are fleeing and also includes an effective control of our own borders which also no longer works given the EU’s complete failure to protect its external borders,” Alexander Dobrindt said in a statement.

Dobrindt, who is a member of the Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Bavarian allies CSU, also warned that the country “has reached its limit of capacity,” a day after 12,200 more refugees reached the southern German city of Munich — a key arrival point.

As Germany buckles under the strain of the record refugee influx expected to reach 800,000 this year, dissenting voices from the CSU has grown louder.

Dobrindt’s statement came just days after CSU vice president Hans-Peter Friedrich called Merkel’s decision “an unprecedented political error” that would have “catastrophic consequences.”