Germany: Conservatives determined to shake up migration rules

The German conservatives, favorites in the elections of February 23, promised Thursday a radical tightening of migration policy in Germany, even if it means freeing themselves from European rules, after a new deadly attack committed by a foreigner in an irregular situation.

This knife attack, committed on Wednesday in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg (south), cost the lives of a 2-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man who intervened. The suspect arrested on site is a 28-year-old Afghan in an illegal situation and suffering from psychiatric disorders, according to the authorities.

The drama adds to several bloody acts in recent months whose perpetrators have foreign origins and which have ignited the debate on the country’s migration policy, in the midst of the campaign for the legislative elections. Conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz, whose party leads in voting intentions, summoned the press to promise a complete shift in the country’s asylum policy.

If he enters the Chancellery, he wants to “refuse entry into Germany for all those who do not have valid documents or who make use of European free movement”, including “people entitled to protection”. “The European Dublin Schengen Eurodac rules are clearly dysfunctional” and Germany will exercise “its right to the primacy of national law,” he added.

Among the measures envisaged: “sustainable” border control, detention of foreigners under an obligation to leave the territory, systematic expulsion of rejected or dangerous asylum seekers.

Germany is a “human country”, Bavarian head of government Markus Söder said on Thursday. “But this cannot be done at the expense of our own population,” he added. “Enough, enough, enough,” he said. The tragedy “will remain (…) engraved in the memory of the entire city,” declared its mayor, Jürgen Herzing, during a commemoration ceremony Thursday in the park.

In a reaction of rare virulence, Chancellor Olaf Scholz demanded on Wednesday to know why the suspect, who arrived in 2022 and was required to leave the territory, “was still in Germany”. The police said they found “no trace of a radical Islamist” during the search of his home.

According to the local authorities, he had also already been noticed on at least three occasions for acts of violence and had been under psychiatric care.

The problem goes back further, said Merz, who attacked the migration policy of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005-2021), former leader of the Conservative Party. “We have been facing the rubble of a flawed asylum and immigration policy in Germany for 10 years,” criticized Merz.

More than a million migrants, mainly Syrians and Afghans fleeing war and persecution, found refuge in Germany during the “migrant crisis” of 2015-2016. Their arrival favored the rise of the AfD, a party hostile to migrants, which entered Parliament in 2017.