Merkel acts on migrants

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives yesterday toughened their tone on integrating migrants, passing a resolution tackling forced marriage and honour killings, and cracking down on dual citizenship.

A day after Merkel called for a ban on full-face Muslim veils "wherever legally possible", her Christian Democrats endorsed that message, stressing the values they wanted the 890000 migrants who arrived in Germany last year to adopt.

Merkel, who implored the party on Tuesday to help her win a fourth term in office next year, told N-TV at the end of the two-day party conference that individual criminals among the migrants must be found and prosecuted.

But she was quick to say: "We must not draw conclusions about the whole group of people seeking protection."

Neighbouring Austria on Sunday rejected a candidate vying to become the first freely elected far-right head of state in Europe since World War 2, halting - at least temporarily - the wave of populism sweeping Western democracies.

Deputy Finance Minister and senior CDU member Jens Spahn said legal barriers for deportation must be lowered.

"Those who are not refugees, who are not fleeing from Iraq or Syria from war and persecution, must return to their homelands - and that needs to be done consistently," he told a radio station yesterday.

Ahead of next year's election, the CDU is trying to mend fences with its Bavarian ally, the Christian Social Union , which is tougher on immigration, to try to claw back support lost to the far-right Alternative for Germany .

But Merkel is reluctant to move too far from the centre.

In a sign the CDU base is moving to her right, party members adopted a motion to oblige young people who grew up in Germany to foreign parents to decide by the age of 23 whether they would take German nationality or that of their parents' home country.

The CDU leadership had urged members to reject the motion, which went back on a compromise reached in 2014 with the Social Democrats, a junior party in Merkel's ruling coalition, allowing those concerned to take two passports at the aged of 23.