With Chancellor Angela Merkel under pressure for allowing a million migrants and refugees into the country, Germany wants Greece to sign a deal by the end of July to take back those who had first landed there before moving on.

Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said unless Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras moves to honor his pledge to help Merkel even though Greece is swamped with more than 64,000 refugees and migrants that there will be mass returns.

But German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said she expects the agreement will be quickly signed and Tsipras said the number of those being sent back to Greece would be minimal as Greek officials are struggling to deal with the overwhelming number of asylum applications there after the European Union closed its borders.

We want an agreement with Greece by the end of the month,” she told the Funke publishing group.
Seehofer told Der Spiegel that the absence of bilateral deals was “not a good strategy” and that Germany will start returning migrants reaching its border. “