2024-08-30 22:01:30
Migration policy
Scholz establishes working group with Union on migration
Updated on 28.08.2024Reading time: 4 min.
CDU leader Merz has proposed to the Chancellor that they work together to reorient migration policy. Now Scholz is reacting. But not quite in the way Merz had imagined.
After the suspected Islamist knife attack in Solingen, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has announced talks with the states and the Union as the largest opposition force about the possible consequences. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) will “very quickly invite a representative of the chair and co-chair of the Conference of Prime Ministers, representatives of the largest opposition party and the federal ministries involved to confidential and targeted talks on this issue,” said Scholz after a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Berlin.
The talks should focus on the return of rejected asylum seekers to their countries of origin, the fight against Islamist terror and gun laws. Proposals from the states and the Union should also be taken into account. The Conference of Minister Presidents (MPK) is currently chaired by Hesse with CDU Minister President Boris Rhein. Lower Saxony with Prime Minister Stephan Weil is co-chairing for the SPD-led states.
On October 1, Saxony will take over the MPK presidency, where CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer is currently leading the government. However, elections will be held there next Sunday. In the polls, the AfD and the CDU are in a neck-and-neck race for the position of the strongest party.
By establishing the working group, Scholz is reacting to an initiative by CDU leader Friedrich Merz, with whom he spoke on Tuesday about the consequences of the knife attack in Solingen, which left three people dead and eight injured. However, the head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group had only spoken out in favor of appointing one representative each from the government and the Union, who should prepare cooperation on changes to the law.
Now the group is getting significantly bigger. Above all, the states will be involved. Scholz had already agreed with them last autumn on measures to combat irregular migration. From the federal government, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD), Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) are to be there. So all three traffic light parties are represented.
Merz’s plan to negotiate only with the SPD will therefore not come to fruition. The CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader had already named his parliamentary group manager Thorsten Frei as a representative for possible talks on Tuesday. It was initially unclear when the group’s first meeting would take place.
The government may want to present a first package of measures “in a timely manner” before then. “Discussions have been ongoing within the government since Saturday and we are now in the final stages of editing,” said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. He expects results “very soon.”
One of the issues is to further accelerate the repatriation of rejected asylum seekers. Scholz had already announced deportations “on a large scale” last year. Although the number of deportations in the first half of the year increased by more than a quarter compared to the previous year, this is still not enough, the Chancellor stressed. “That is why the federal government will continue its efforts to further limit irregular migration. This also includes new legal measures, which we in the federal government have been coordinating intensively since the weekend.”
The FDP is open to the Union’s proposals on migration policy. Party leader Christian Lindner said in Berlin that the government is working on control and consistency in migration and will decide on further measures to this end. “If the CDU faces up to its responsibility after the Merkel era, we should discuss their proposals openly and constructively. There must be no bans on thinking.” From the FDP’s point of view, it has long been clear that a new realism is needed in immigration policy.
Green Party leader Omid Nouripour, however, doubts that they can be implemented. The Union has made a lot of suggestions, he said on Deutschlandfunk. But he has more questions than before. “We are ready to talk,” Nouripour stressed. But he wants to better understand what the Union wants.
Merz had offered Scholz the opportunity to push through laws in the Bundestag without the traffic light coalition partners, the Greens and the FDP, if necessary. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck then accused the Union parliamentary group leader of using “divisive rhetoric”. The Green politician said in an interview with Sat.1 that proposing talks but immediately saying who one did not want to talk to was “somewhat treacherous”.
The CDU leader’s demands include a “de facto freeze on the admission” of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan and the possibility of deporting rejected asylum seekers back to these two countries. Furthermore, anyone who travels from Germany to their home country as a refugee should immediately lose all residence status in Germany. There should be permanent controls at the EU’s external borders and more powers for the federal police. Merz also brings up the possibility of declaring a “national emergency” in order to circumvent EU law and be able to turn back migrants who first entered another EU country.
In the suspected Islamist attack in Solingen on Friday evening, an attacker killed three people with a knife and injured eight others at a town festival. The suspected perpetrator is 26-year-old Syrian Issa Al H., who is in custody. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office is investigating him for murder and suspected membership of the terrorist group Islamic State (IS), among other things. The group claimed responsibility for the attack and also published a video of a masked man who is believed to be the perpetrator. The suspected perpetrator was actually supposed to have been deported to Bulgaria last year, but this failed.