German Foreign Minister Demands Deportation of Balkan Undocumented Migrants

Undocumented migrants from the Balkans should be promptly deported from Germany, the country's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said on Sunday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Steinmeier added that about 30-40 percent of Germany's asylum applicants came from the Western Balkans.

“This group has no chance to obtain a refugee status. That’s why we have to make a clear-cut decision and to act in accordance with it,” Steinmeier told the Bild newspaper in an interview.

The minister said that Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia should not be treated the same way as the other countries of the region because of their rapprochement with the European Union.

According to the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the country received about 200,000 asylum applications during the 2015. Some 94,000 of them are from the Balkans and 40,000 are from Syria. The BAMF President said that almost all applications from the Balkans would be rejected.

According to the European Asylum Support Office, the number of migrant’s applications for international protection in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland has increased by two-thirds in the first five months of 2015 in comparison to the same period last year.