Before the planned talks on asylum policy with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer called for an upper limit on the admission of refugees to Germany. “50,000 or 60,000 refugees per year – that can’t be more for the next few years because we have such a big integration effort,” the CDU politician told “Bild”.
According to Kretschmer, this upper limit is necessary until 2030 because Germany lacks sufficient absorption capacity. “If you look at the municipalities, if you look at how many integration courses there are and how many German courses, what it looks like in the schools – then we first have to make these integration efforts.”
Kretschmer for new EU-Turkey agreement
The head of government also spoke out in favor of renewing the EU-Turkey agreement. “We have to work with Turkey to ensure that this agreement, which Ms. Merkel negotiated back then, is revived. Turkey has to take care of these people. We are helping financially,” said Kretschmer. Turkey and the EU signed a refugee pact in 2016 in which Ankara promised to take action against irregular migration. Part of the agreement was, among other things, that the EU could send back refugees and migrants who came illegally to the Greek islands via Turkey.
Kretschmer now again called for more consistent deportations. Every rejected asylum seeker who is not deported is “a failure of the state, is a defeat and cannot be accepted because the population will not accept it either.” The Prime Minister called for more deportation agreements. The federal government must also stop development aid to countries that do not take back rejected asylum seekers. “We have to have these secure repatriation agreements. We want to deport people as countries, but we keep failing because these countries of origin don’t accept refugees. And to be honest, it can’t be the case that we pay development aid in magnitude, but these states and then theirs Don’t take citizens back,” said Kretschmer.
