European leaders reject Trump’s refugee ban as violating principles

Reflecting mounting European anger and astonishment at President Trump, several countries on Sunday rejected — sometimes in blunt terms — his ban on all refugees and the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries entering the United States, the New York Times reports.

The spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said there was no justification for the policy — not even the fight against terrorism — of refusing to admit refugees fleeing war. Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain revised her stance on the American directive to take a harder line, while Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni of Italy said that Mr. Trump’s approach ran counter to basic European principles.

Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for Ms. Merkel, said in a statement that she had reminded Mr. Trump during their telephone conversation on Saturday that the Geneva Convention on refugees obliges all member states to take in those fleeing war.

The chancellor “is convinced that the resolute fight against terrorism does not justify blanket suspicion on grounds of origin or belief,” Mr. Seibert said, a day after Ms. Merkel and Mr. Trump talked at length for the first time since his inauguration on Jan. 20.

In London, after Mrs. May’s response to a question about the issue on Saturday at a news conference in Turkey prompted sharp criticism of her unwillingness to criticize Mr. Trump, her spokesman said that the British government did “not agree with this kind of approach and it is not one we will be taking.”

Mr. Gentilioni, whose country took in more than 180,000 migrants last year, did not mention Mr. Trump or the United States by name in a post on Twitter, but there seemed little doubt about what he was referring to. “Italy is anchored in its values,” he wrote on Sunday. “Open society, pluralism, no discrimination. They are the pillars of Europe.”

The comments came a day after President François Hollande of France, who unlike Ms. Merkel is not running for re-election this year, said he had reminded Mr. Trump of his “conviction that the ongoing fight to defend our democracy will be effective only if we sign up to respect to the founding principles and, in particular, the welcoming of refugees.”

Mr. Seibert said Ms. Merkel had explained her stance to Mr. Trump, even though statements released in Washington and Berlin hours after their conversation made no mention of Ms. Merkel’s views on the executive order that the president signed on Friday.

Instead, in notably spare tones, the statements suggested that the two had agreed to cooperate in reinforcing NATO and a trans-Atlantic alliance that Mr. Trump has questioned, most recently in an interview with European newspapers days before his inauguration, in which he called the alliance “obsolete.”

Ms. Merkel reacted coolly to Mr. Trump’s election in November, offering close cooperation only on the basis of shared values such as equal treatment for all, with no discrimination on the basis of faith, political views, sexual orientation or ethnic origin. Her stance on Mr. Trump’s executive order was in line with that approach.

Ms. Merkel, who grew up in Communist East Germany and is the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, has invoked that background in justifying her decision to allow more than one million asylum seekers, many of them Muslims, into Germany since 2015.

In his interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper and The Times of London, Mr. Trump was strongly critical of Ms. Merkel’s refugee policy. “I think she made one very catastrophic mistake, and that was taking all of these illegals, you know, taking all of the people from wherever they come from,” he said. “And nobody even knows where they come from.”

The influx of refugees has hurt the chancellor politically and aided the rise of a far-right party that has ridden anti-migrant and anti-Muslim sentiment to capture seats in 10 of Germany’s 16 state legislatures.

The party, Alternative for Germany, seems certain to enter the federal parliament after the September 24 elections, which will follow crucial votes in the Netherlands and France this spring and help determine whether a weakened Europe can maintain its unity.

A spokesman for Mrs. May, who was not identified by name under traditional ground rules, said that if Mr. Trump’s policy affects British citizens, as it will for people who are citizens of two countries, “then clearly we will make representations to the U.S. government about that.”

The comments followed a backlash from politicians and on social media, after comments from Mrs. May in a news conference in Ankara, the Turkish capital. She had flown there she after becoming the first foreign leader to meet with the new American president, a source of pride for Downing Street.

After meeting Turkish leaders, she was asked several times by British journalists about her reaction to the executive order. She refused to condemn the policy and finally said — after reporters shouted, “Answer the question!” — that “the United States is responsible for the United States’ policy on refugees. The United Kingdom is responsible for the United Kingdom’s policy on refugees.”

One person likely to be affected is a British sports hero, the Olympic champion runner Mo Farah. He was born in Somalia and came to Britain at age 8, and he may not be able to return to his training base and home in Oregon, where his family lives.

The opposition Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, posted a photograph of Mrs. May and Mr. Trump on Twitter, writing: “hand in hand with the man who banned Mo Farah & Tory MP. Yet she remains silent.”

“It’s deeply troubling that I will have to tell my children that Daddy might not be able to come home,” Mr. Farah wrote on Facebook, “to explain why the President has introduced a policy that comes from a place of ignorance and prejudice.”

Mr. Trump’s executive order was preceded on Friday by an emotional appeal from the mayor of Berlin, related to another proposal by Mr. Trump that has proved polarizing — the construction of a wall along the United States border with Mexico.

“Berlin, the city of Europe’s division, the city of Europe’s freedom, cannot silently look on as a country sets about building a new wall,” the mayor, Michael Müller, said in a statement.

“We Berliners know better than most the pain caused when a whole continent is split by barbed wire and walls. Our division destroyed the prospects of millions. But ultimately, we, the people, overcame it,” he wrote, recalling the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.

Mr. Müller took the unusual step of invoking another United States president, Ronald Reagan, in appealing to Mr. Trump to tear down walls rather than build new ones.