Germany decides to host refugee children stranded in Greece

Germany's governing parties of the conservative union (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) decided to host children in need of protection from Greek refugee camps, the coalition committee announced on Monday.

Greece should be "supported in the difficult humanitarian situation of about 1,000 to 1,500 children on the Greek islands," the coalition committee noted.

According to the committee, these children were either in urgent need of treatment due to a serious illness or unaccompanied and younger than 14 years of age, most of them girls.

Negotiations would take place at European level to organize the hosting of these children in a so-called coalition of the willing, referring to those European countries that voluntarily take on refugee children without a binding European Union (EU) decision.

Last week, seven mayors of German cities and Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius had called on the German government in an open letter to act and to accommodate unaccompanied children from refugee camps in Greece as quickly as possible.