A majority of citizens in Germany are in favor of maintaining individual asylum rights in the EU. This was the result of a Forsa survey for the magazine “Stern”, which was published on Tuesday. According to this, 64 percent of those surveyed think it is correct that the individual right of asylum is retained in the European Union – i.e. every individual politically persecuted person in the EU can apply for asylum.
In the debate surrounding immigration to Germany, the parliamentary secretary of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei, proposed a few days ago that the individual right to asylum be largely abolished. He advocated replacing this with a European quota solution for taking in refugees. 300,000 to 400,000 people per year should be selected directly abroad and then distributed in Europe.
According to the survey, only 32 percent of Germans support Frei’s proposal. 4 percent have no opinion.
According to the survey, voters in the governing parties SPD, FDP and Greens strongly reject Frei’s plan. Among the supporters of the Greens, 88 percent are in favor of maintaining the existing regulations, 84 percent of FDP voters and 76 percent of SPD voters. Even among the Union voters, there is therefore no majority for Frei’s proposal. 56 percent of them reject it. Only among AfD voters does a majority of 56 percent support the abolition of the individual right to asylum in the EU.
Frei’s move had been sharply criticized by the traffic light coalition. The federal government emphasized that it is sticking to the individual right to asylum.
