Zoom Image
Annalena Baerbock in Colombia: "The compromise is not an easy one at all"
Photograph:
IMAGO/Kira Hofmann / IMAGO/photothek
Following the EU's agreement on tightening the common European asylum policy, which was internally controversial among the Greens, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has cancelled part of her programme in the Colombian city of Cali. Instead, the Green politician is campaigning with verve for the compromise with her party and the Green parliamentary group, it was said on the sidelines of the trip to Colombia.
Baerbock will not visit the german-Colombian peace institute Capaz as planned and take part in a panel discussion on feminist peace policy and the peace process in the country. However, Baerbock still wanted to give the laudatory speech at the award ceremony of the german-Latin American-Caribbean women's network "Unidas" (german: "United") to Vice President Márquez. Unidas« was launched in 2019. It is part of the Federal Foreign Office's Latin America and Caribbean Initiative, of which Baerbock is the patron.
Divided party
Previously, Baerbock had defended the compromise of the European Union (EU) for stricter asylum procedures. "The compromise is not an easy one at all. Honesty means that if we as the federal government had been able to decide on the reform on our own, it would have looked different," the Green politician wrote in a statement published during her visit to Cali.
"But honesty also means that anyone who thinks that this compromise is unacceptable accepts for the future that no one will be distributed," Baerbock said, apparently in the direction of critics in his own ranks.
At a meeting of Community interior ministers in Luxembourg, a sufficiently large majority of Member States had previously voted in favour of comprehensive reform plans. In particular, they provide for a much harsher approach to migrants with no prospect of staying.
atb/dpa