Germany to hold migration summit on country's highest peak

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt is set to host counterparts from neighbouring countries for talks on tightening European migration policy set to take place on the country's highest mountain in Bavaria on July 18.

The planned meeting on the Zugspitze - a peak towering 2,962 metres on the German-Austrian border - aims "to jointly provide important impetus for a tougher European migration policy," said a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry.

Besides the interior ministers of France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic, the EU commissioner for internal affairs and migration, Magnus Brunner, has also been invited to attend.

Ministers are also to discuss how to better fight people smuggling as well as deportations at the meeting some 100 kilometres south-west of Munich.

EU member states have long been debating to further tighten new rules under the bloc's common asylum system, known as GEAS, to be implemented by 2026.

Under the latest reform, member states are not allowed to deport asylum seekers to countries outside the EU if the applicant does not have a connection to that country. However, a number of countries have called for that element of the reform to be scrapped.