Berlin has struck a bilateral deal with Italy on migration that it will sign in the coming days, Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Thursday.
The agreement follows two similar deals Germany struck with Spain and Greece earlier this summer, as part of a compromise between Angela Merkel’s CDU and her Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), whose demands for tougher migration policies threatened the stability of the coalition government.
Speaking in the German parliament, Seehofer did not go into the specifics of the deal, saying the agreement had not yet been signed by him or his Italian counterpart, Matteo Salvini, and would take several more days to finalize.
“To save on travel expenses, we will exchange papers,” Seehofer said, adding that the deal could already be considered a “success.”