A German minister says the capacity of his country to cope with the huge inflow of asylum seekers is restricted, in yet another sign that Berlin is doing away with its so-called open-door policy on immigration.

“We need to send a clear message to the world: we are very much prepared to help, we’ve shown that we are, but our possibilities are also limited,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday.

Germany, Europe’s top destination for refugees, is expecting to receive between 800,000 and one million asylum seekers this year. Most of the refugees are fleeing conflict-hit zones in the Middle East and Africa.

Divided by refugees

The unprecedented influx has caused division among the ruling German coalition parties over the best way to tackle the issue.

The rift reemerged on Friday after Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said future Syrian refugees would receive shorter residence permits and be barred from reunion with their families, a statement he later retracted.

The German finance minister, however, supported the proposal, saying that the government was examining it in detail.

“I think it’s a necessary decision and I’m very much in favor that we agree on this in the coalition,” Schaueble said.

The developments followed a Thursday crisis meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of her two coalition partners, in which they agreed on a raft of measures to address the refugee crisis, among them the prompt deportation of refused asylum claimants.

Merkel, who is under pressure at home to curb the flow of refugees into Germany, recently demanded a fair way of distributing asylum seekers between EU member states.

Her government now seems to be taking a different course as evident in the remarks by Schaeuble, the finance minister.

Europe is facing record refugee arrivals. Thousands of asylum seekers, many of whom from war-ravaged Syria, travel from Turkey to Greece by boat. They then transit from Greece through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia to Austria, with the ultimate goal of reaching Germany and other wealthy Western European states.

According to the latest figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 773,244 refugees have reached Europe’s shores so far this year while a total of 3,423 people have either died or gone missing in their perilous journey to the continent.