Berlin (AFP) - Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande called Monday for a unified response to Europe's biggest migrant crisis since World War II, as the German leader condemned "vile" protests against refugees.
"We must put in place a unified system for the right to asylum," Hollande said in a brief statement ahead of talks, calling the influx from the world's crisis zones "an exceptional situation that will last for some time".
"Rather than wait, we should organise and reinforce our policies, and that is what France and Germany are proposing," he said.
Both countries, like the rest of the EU, have been struggling to find a response to the unprecedented numbers arriving -- from the thousands landing on the shores of Greece and Italy to the hundreds risking their lives to climb onto trucks to travel from France to Britain.
Germany, which expects to take in 800,000 asylum seekers in 2015, saw anti-migrant sentiment rear its head over the weekend as violent protests erupted against a refugee home.
"It is vile for far-right extremists and neo-Nazis to try to spread their hollow, hateful propaganda but it is just as shameful for citizens including families with children to join them" in the protests, said Merkel in her strongest statement to date against a wave of anti-refugee protests to hit eastern Germany. ...
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