German finance minister seeks common EU asylum law quickly - paper

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble urged members of the European Union in a newspaper interview to quickly establish a common European asylum law as the continent deals with its worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. "We need a European asylum law and a European asylum policy - and quickly!" German newspaper Die Welt quoted Schaeuble as saying in an interview due to be published on Friday. He said this law should be "a question of months rather than years but, again, first we need to get access to Europe under control at the moment". A European asylum law would not require any changes to EU treaties, Schaeuble said. While EU countries agreed in 1999 to create a Common European Asylum System and there have since been attempts to harmonise laws in the member countries, there are still big differences between them on some issues like refugee recognition or reception conditions. Schaeuble said Germany was prepared to hand over national rights when it came to asylum policy and added that he thought France would be prepared to do that too. He was also optimistic that Italy and potentially Greece could be won over. Schaeuble said it would be necessary to speak to the eastern European countries too, adding: "We mustn't always just push Hungary into the corner. Hungary has to withstand the pressure at the external borders of the Schengen system". Schaeuble said Europe needed to send a clear signal that it was controlling access "but a Europe full of fences is unthinkable" and as a prosperous region, Europe had a duty to help the world's persecuted and poor. (Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by David Gregorio)