Berlin to impose checks on all borders from next week ++ CDU to join migration summit this afternoon
Tuesday 10th September
Good morning.
Germany’s migration policy is undergoing rapid and drastic change as a result of recent terror attacks in Mannheim and Solingen and the electoral breakthrough of the AfD in Saxony and Thuringia, with further gains expected in Brandenburg in two weeks’ time. The government now appears to be moving towards unilateral action, with significant consequences for the state of EU migration and asylum policy, including the Schengen zone of free movement across and between states.
Who governs? In the last week, it feels like the CDU does
Largely, the impetus for this shift has come not from government, from the opposition. The centre-right CDU leader Friedrich Merz has become increasingly bold in his statements on migration in recent weeks, declaring the ‘uncontrolled influx’ of migrants, especially asylum seekers, to be reaching a ‘state of emergency’.
Last week, after high-level talks began between the federal and state governments and the CDU on the subject of reforming migration policy, Merz delivered an ultimatum to the government, announcing that his party would only continue talks with the government if German border control officers were given powers to turn asylum seekers back at the German border by “next Tuesday” (today).
Yesterday evening, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced that from next week, Germany will be imposing physical checks at its borders with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark, as well as extending existing checks on borders with Poland, Czechia, Switzerland and Austria, for at least six months. From the 16th September, according to the Ministry of the Interior, controls will be possible at all German borders, "including the possibility of rejections". This morning, the CDU has said that it will take part in further government discussions, due to take place this afternoon, implying that the party has received word that rejections are more than just a possibility. In the last week, at least on migration policy, you could be forgiven for thinking that the CDU had become a new — and powerful— partner in Germany’s governing coalition.
Press reaction
FAZ: ‘Is Baerbock joking?’: Criticism of Foreign Minister’s warning
The liberal-conservative FAZ has come out in favour of Merz’s action in recent days, while pouring scorn on the Green party, by far Berlin’s most staunch (if not the only) defender of a generous asylum policy in Germany and the EU. This morning, Berthold Kohler, one of the paper’s co-editors, has fired off a punchy response to Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s warnings against unilateral action by Berlin.
Baerbock said yesterday that “we should not allow ourselves to be fooled by those who are now deluding us into believing that the nation state could better regulate anything in Europe on its own", and warned against jeopardising the new Common European Asylum System (CEAS), which the German government helped to negotiate and is due to come into force next year, by going it alone at the national level.
“Of course,” Kohler writes in today’s FAZ, “the warning against going it alone sounds like a bad joke coming from them.”
“The Greens have always been in favour of Germany's special approach of basically taking in and then subsidising anyone who can say the word asylum.
“However, the problems that have arisen from this, including the triumphs of the AfD and the BSW, can no longer be ignored. Germany, too, cannot wait for the CEAS to be finalised. Berlin could take a much more restrictive approach than before without breaking European law (as other EU states have been doing for a long time). However, like Baerbock, one can also continue to look for excuses in order to preserve as much of a misguided and failed refugee policy as possible.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung: CDU/CSU’s ‘disregard for the law’ is ‘dangerous’
Meanwhile, the left-liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Ronen Steinke warns of the danger of the rhetoric deployed by CDU leader Friedrich Merz, and his Bavarian CSU partner Markus Söder, in demonising legal protections for asylum seekers and the lawyers who implement them. Steinke highlights the case of an asylum lawyer in Dresden who has been subjected to death threats after being named in the tabloids for working as an advocate for the Solingen attacker.
“Up there the woke judges, down here the "real" people - this is how populists talk, who like to claim greater, supposedly more authentic political legitimacy for their own political programme than their electoral success actually provides. Of course you can change the rules. That is the epitome of democracy. And the rules of asylum and migration policy in particular have been changed so often in recent years that they do not set a bad example. But anyone who instead calls for laws to be ignored or even exposes to public scorn those who, as a function of the administration of justice, have to uphold such rules professionally, is playing a dangerous game.”
Handelsblatt: Faeser orders border controls - business fears disadvantages
Handelsblatt provides the important adjunct of business reaction to the move. Unsurprisingly, business leaders are concerned about the impact border checks will have on the flow of goods and workers. The paper spoke to Dirk Jandura, President of the German Wholesale and Foreign Trade Association (BGA), for his reaction:
"Restrictions on the free movement of persons, as currently announced by the German government, always mean delays and thus cost increases for the economy and especially for wholesale and foreign trade. They disrupt logistics and therefore disrupt supply chains.
"It is important for us to implement the measures with a sense of proportion," he emphasised. The limitation of border controls to an initial six months was to be welcomed. "However, we would have liked this to have been communicated earlier."
FAZ: “No room for manoeuvre” on asylum, says Austria
The FAZ has a useful summary of some of the international reaction to Faeser’s decision.
While the news has “made few waves” in Warsaw and Prague, the paper claims, the reaction has been far more robust in Vienna. The FAZ quotes Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP), who told the paper:
“Austria will not accept people who are sent back from Germany. There is no room for manoeuvre! I have therefore instructed the Federal Police Director not to carry out any takeovers (of asylum seekers).”
Karner, as the FAZ’s correspondents explain, may well be acting under the same influences as her German counterpart in taking a tough stance on migration. Austria goes to the polls on 29th September to elect its lower house.
Of course, the results of today’s meeting between the federal and state governments and the CDU/CSU will determine next steps, but the other thing to watch is the reaction in Brussels. Politico’s ‘Brussels Playbook’ this morning quotes Dutch MEP Raquel García Hermida-Van der Walle (Renew), who issued a statement on Monday “deploring” the move, which she said would hurt Dutch and German border communities.
“One of our most important freedoms is being jeopardised to send a political signal. Europe will not become safer with political signals, but rather with investments to strengthen external borders and police cooperation.