The head of one of Europe’s leading economic think tanks has called on Germany’s government to scrap the minimum wage and raise the country’s retirement age in order to cope with the huge influx of migrants now underway. Only by introducing such measures can the enormous costs associated with the flow be borne, he said. Germany will spend €6 billion on caring for the 800,000 migrants expected to arrive in the country by the end of this year. Last year just 400,000 people came to Germany, so the country has been hit hard financially as well as socially by the unexpected jump in costs. In order to avoid piling debts up on to later generations, the Ifo institute, based in Munich has called on the government to raise the retirement age from 63 to 70, pointing out that as the population ages we’re all likely to be working longer anyway. “It is not a matter of playing off the pensioners against the refugees,” the institute’s budget expert Niklas Potrafke said, in response to criticism of the plan. “Extending the age of retirement won’t affect current pensioners,” he explained, adding “in the course of demographic change we would anyway all work a