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  • CDU in showdown over UN migration pact

    CDU in showdown over UN migration pact CDU in showdown over UN migration pact

    Leading Christian Democrats are warning their colleagues not to call Germany's participation in the UN's Global Compact for Migration into question. Jens Spahn and other CDU members have gone rogue on asylum policy.

    Members of Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) are hitting back at Health Minister Jens Spahn's suggestion that Germany should not sign on to the United Nations' Global Compact for Migration after all.

    Norbert Röttgen, who heads the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee, said the agreement, which is not legally binding, would be an important step by the international community in controlling migration and was therefore in Germany's best interest.

    "To put off signing the migration pact would be a lack of leadership that Germany cannot permit," Röttgen told daily Bild for an article published on Monday.

    Spahn, who hopes to take the reins of the CDU when Merkel relinquishes them at the end of the year, has called for further debate on the pact when the party convenes to choose its next boss in December. Other members of the CDU have also criticized Germany's participation in the pact, which was set for ratification in December and in part "intends to reduce the risks and vulnerabilities migrants face at different stages of migration," according to the UN.

    The pact calls for nations to take voluntary measures to help improve the conditions in migrants' countries of origin that are frequently cited as the primary motivators of emigration, as well as to help destination countries better assimilate migrants and provide them with sustainable conditions. Its 23 objectives, in the UN's words, strive "to create conducive conditions that enable all migrants to enrich our societies through their human, economic and social capacities, and thus facilitate their contributions to sustainable development at the local, national, regional and global levels."