Hesse’s Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) told the “Bild” newspaper on Saturday that the federal government had “failed to mitigate illegal migration pressure at EU level through effective European agreements”. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) should “no longer ignore the demands for situational border controls”. Schuster told the newspaper: “Due to the current high migratory pressure, there is still a need for temporary, situation-dependent EU internal border controls, including on the border with Poland.”
Since the refugee crisis of 2015, there have been border controls with Austria to prevent migrants from neighboring countries from continuing their journey to Germany. At the refugee summit on May 10, the federal government had agreed with the federal states to introduce this “depending on the situation” in other neighboring countries.
After difficult negotiations in Luxembourg, the majority of EU interior ministers approved a compromise on Thursday evening to end the long-standing asylum dispute. For the first time, this provides for asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders, but also for a distribution of migrants among the EU countries. Countries that refuse to accept migrants will have to pay a fine of €20,000 for each migrant into a Brussels-managed fund.
Chancellor Scholz emphasized the joint responsibility of the EU states to achieve “a fairer process” in the distribution of refugees in Europe. That is why it was agreed to establish a “solidarity mechanism”, said Scholz on Saturday.
Faster procedures and progress in digitization are needed to check whether someone can stay because there are reasons for protection. Anyone who cannot bring up these protective reasons must also be told: “You have to go back.” That was necessary “to protect the right to asylum,” emphasized the Chancellor.
CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja called the compromise a “first important step towards limiting illegal immigration into the European Union”. But that’s not all, Czaja told the newspapers of the Bayern media group and called on the federal government to take further steps to limit illegal migration. As an example, he cited the expansion of the so-called safe countries of origin.
The general manager of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, Gerd Landsberg, told the RND newspapers on Saturday: “We expressly warn that, with regard to the European asylum compromise, we are now going over to the agenda and important national issues are not regulated.” He pointed out that the compromise still had to be agreed with the EU Parliament. This could result in changes “or the project could even fail completely”.
If a decision is made, it will be a long time before the planned facilities at the European external borders are operational. “A short-term relief for the cities and municipalities in Germany is therefore not to be expected,” said Landsberg.
The parliamentary director of the Union faction, Thorsten Frei (CDU), told the “Augsburger Allgemeine” on Saturday: “A reform of the common European asylum policy will show its effects at best in two or three years, but the load limit has already been reached in many municipalities or exceeded.” He therefore called for rapid steps at national level until possible Europe-wide regulations take effect.
The European Greens announced opposition to the reform plans. “As Greens in the European Parliament, we do not consider the Council decision to be viable – both because it undermines human rights standards and does not provide any long-term, practicable solutions for a sustainable common European asylum policy,” said co-group leader Terry Reintke to the RND newspapers. “We will fight for improvements in talks with the EU Commission and the European Council.”
