Germany’s finance minister proposes European tax on petrol to help finance the Germany’s efforts to manage the refugee crisis.
Wolfgang Schaeuble a prominent member of Merkel’s conservative party told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Saturday that ‘if the funds in national budgets and the European budget aren’t enough, then let’s agree, for example, to raise a levy on every liter of gasoline at a certain level.’
Germany and Sweden have invited large numbers of refugees and are now asking other countries to bear the burden.
It is an interesting proposal from German finance minister because it was Dr Merkel who invited the migrants and now asking other to pay for it despite Germany had surplus tax revenues last year.
Schaeuble said the New Year’s Eve mass sexual assaults in Cologne on women that have been blamed on Arab and North African men only ‘step up the pressure’ to find ‘a solution to the problem of controlling the European Union’s external borders’.
He added that he fully backed Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s efforts to solve the challenges posed by the migrant crisis.
Earlier Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer threatened to take Merkel’s government to court over its “open doors” refugee policy as political pressure grows
on Merkel to reduce the number of new arrivals, however, Merkel refuse to put any cap or close German border instead asking European members to take more refugees despite German Transport minister Alexander Dobrindt, French Prime minister Manuel Valls and Poland Prime Minister Beata Szydlo openly spoken against her policy.