Merkel calls for EU "common stance" on migrant crisis

PanARMENIAN.Net - German Chancellor Angela Merkel Wednesday, February 17 urged an EU "common stance" on the migrant crisis and on protecting the bloc's frontiers, as eastern members move to shut internal borders, AFP reports.

On the eve of an EU summit, Merkel said "the main thing now is to have a common stance on how to secure the external borders, and here the EU-Turkey plan offers a good solution".

Merkel, under heavy pressure at home to reduce arrivals, supports a plan under which transit country Turkey would seal its borders and then fly refugees to Europe where they would be settled under an EU quota system.

However, most EU countries have shown little enthusiasm for the idea, and the so-called Visegrad Four - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary -- have openly defied Merkel.

Merkel said that "we will speak at the upcoming EU Council about how we can work together to protect our external border, and I want us to work together on the EU-Turkish agenda that 28 members have decided."

She was speaking at a Berlin joint press conference with Sri Lanka's visiting President Maithripala Sirisena before she was set to address the German parliament on the EU summit's topics, AFP says.

Merkel, a decade in power, has seen her long-stellar domestic support drop over her liberal migration policy since more than 1.1 million asylum seekers came to Germany last year.