German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere spoke out on Thursday in favor of further limiting the possibility of Syrian refugees to bring their family members to Germany.

In an interview with Heilbronner Stimme newspaper, the minister advocated continuing a temporary policy measure which applies to migrants with subsidiary protection status.

The current ban on family reunification for the affected group is effective until March 2018.

De Maiziere did not offer any concrete figures for how many Syrians could be brought to Germany under the family reunification clause after the ban's lapse, but warned that the number was "staggering."

"We estimate that one family member will follow for every refugee," he said.

A report by Bild newspaper has suggested that 390,000 Syrians could bring in relatives. Given the outcomes of asylum applications between 2015 and 2016, there was a potential for 267,500 individuals to enter the country in this fashion. Authorities could already be confronted with as many as 120,000 such cases from May 2018.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she would only decide on whether or not to prolong the existing ban if she is re-elected in national elections in September.

Speaking to Heilbronner Stimme, de Maiziere further addressed the prevailing high incidence of refugees and migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, something that had to be prevented.

The minister proposed that "everybody who arrives with a trafficker [should have] no chance of remaining in Europe."

"This would mean that we would send everybody intercepted at sea back" as long as the conditions in the country they were being sent back to were humane, he said.

For such a thing to work, Germany would need the cooperation of North African states such as Libya.