German foreign minister admits failure in visa scandal
By Lisbeth Kirk
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has admitted that he should have acted more quickly to stop a loophole in Germany's visa rules, which allowed tens of thousands of eastern Europeans to flood into Germany between 2000 and 2003.
The affair started when German visa rules were liberalised to make it easier for citizens of new democratic states in eastern Europe to enter the European Union.
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Presentation of a specialised insurance document was in some cases enough to obtain visa and enter the country.
The embassy in the Ukraine capital, Kiev, was particularly busy and managed to issue 297,000 visas in 2001 alone, according to Deutsche Welle.
The opposition in Germany has claimed the lax visa rules allowed an influx of prostitutes, drug dealers and gangsters from eastern Europe.
During the day-long televised testimony on Monday (25 April) Mr Fischer admitted failure but accused his political opponents of exaggerating the scale of the problem.
Mr Fischer's Green Party is a junior partner in the German government lead by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats (SPD).
The opposition referred once during the parliamentary inquiry to the possibility of the popular Green minister resigning.
"To achieve that, a simple bill in the Bundestag will do," Mr Fischer replied, knowing that such a proposal would not be backed by a majority, according to Spiegel Online.