Germany will carry on the very hard line on migrants, increasing controls at the border, rejecting anyone who is discovered to try to enter the country and denying the right of asylum. This was clearly reiterated by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who on his third day as a chancellor of Germany went to Brussels to meet the top of the European Union, among other things on the day of the Feast of Europe.
“We are carrying out more intensive checks at borders”, and “we will also continue to reject people, but all this is in line with European law,” he said after meeting the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa.
The Berlin Street
The German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt issued an order on Wednesday to reject migrants without documents, including asylum seekers, at the frontiers of the country, on the first day of work of the new coalition government between the popular CDUs and the Social Democrats of the SPD.
Dobrindt announced the decision to revoke an education in 2015, at the time of the government of Angela Merkel, who had allowed the entry of third countries without documents without the emergency born from the turnout on the continent of thousands of refugees, most of whom were fleeing the war in Syria. But now the times have changed and Merz no longer intends to be so permissive.
Before the German federal elections in February, Merz had promised a turn of lives on immigration after a series of violent crimes that involved migrants and the increase in support for the far right. Since then his coalition has decided to reject asylum seekers at borders, to allow deportations to Syria and to suspend family reunification.
The Dublin regulation
“The Dublin regulation establishes that the kindergarten must be requested in the country of first entrance”, recalled Merz, speaking after meeting the president of the Ursula von der Leyen commission, underlining that the country of first entrance “is generally rarely Germany”, which “except for Switzerland, and Switzerland is part of the Schengen area”.
So, he continued, “the request for asylum, regardless of whether we speak of European asylum or German rights, should not be possible in an internal frontier of the Schengen area. And the previous government was already implementing these repatriation measures, even if we know that this is possible only for a limited period of time”.
At his side Von der Leyen has shown himself very permissive compared to the German hard line, remembering that “Member States can introduce controls to internal borders”, even if he underlined that these checks “must be limited over time”, and there must also be “close coordination with neighboring countries”. “And Germany seems to me to be doing both,” he granted.
The protection of external borders
On his first day as a chancellor Merz visited not only France, where he met President Emmanuel Macron, but (for the first time in the history of the country) Poland also met Prime Minister Donald Tusk, his party companion in European popular.
“I said to him very clearly that we do not want to abandon the safety of the external borders of Europe” to the countries that have them on their territory, “because those are not the Polish external borders, but the European external borders”, and therefore all European countries must do their part to control them.
And in this sense the new pact on migrants underlined Von der Leyen, while maintaining the rule of the country of first entrance that must take charge of asylum questions, increases. However, the new pact has not yet entered into force.
