The refusal of some EU countries to accept Muslim refugees is "unacceptable", Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday as Germany called for quotas to divide the influx throughout the bloc.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that a deal to relocate 120,000 refugees among EU countries was far from what was needed to resolve the continent's biggest migrant crisis since the Second World War.
EU interior ministers failed to reach
unanimous agreement on Monday on a plan for binding quotas to relocate 120,000
refugees and take the strain off Greece, Italy, and Hungary, officials said.
The German parliament (Bundestag) voted on Friday to pass a bill that will force large companies and the government to hire more women managers and executives, following a bitter fight.
Hamburg city state has taken the first steps to introducing a women's quota in management - passing a law saying that no committee can be staffed by more than 60 percent of a single gender.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition defeated an election-year opposition bid Thursday to set a quota for female board members in a vote that exposed a party rift and forced her to give ground.
Germany seems set to torpedo attempts to establish a legally required women’s quota in management by the European Union, according to a letter written by the two relevant ministers.
A new poll has found that 70 percent of Germans are in favor of a mandatory quota for women in executive positions at German companies. Even a majority of men have signed on to the idea.
Germany's top companies pledged Wednesday to publish new targets for placing more women in their boardrooms but resisted fresh calls for legal quotas to rectify a wide gender gap.
The federal government is planning a meeting with human resources directors from Germany's 30 DAX companies to tackle the issue of an absence of women in top management jobs, according to a newspaper report.
The head of Germany's largest bank, Deutsche Bank, has drawn ire by saying that appointing more women to its executive board would make it "prettier and more colourful," a press report said Monday.
Green party parliamentary group leader Renate Künast said that Germany's constitution demands gender equality in managing positions in German industry, adding weight to increasing calls for a gender quota.
Most Germans doubt that companies will boost the representation of women on their boards unless they are forced to do so by a mandatory quota, a poll published Friday found.
Chancellor Angela Merkel may have ruled out a mandatory quota for women in executive positions at German firms this week, but on Friday Family Minister Kristina Schröder said she was still pushing a graduated scheme to achieve the same ends.
