As of: February 1, 2024, 9:30 p.m
By: Florian Naumann
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The Union criticizes the traffic light's inaction on the issue of asylum.
However, Merz leaves the call for cooperation to state politicians.
Their conclusion is clear.
Stuttgart/Munich – CDU leader Friedrich Merz has thrown down the feud gauntlet: “Please spare yourself and us your calls for cooperation in the future,” he called to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in the Bundestag on Monday (January 31st).
The next day there were calls from the Union for a joint summit.
Albeit from a different place and for a different format.
The state parliamentary group leaders of the CDU and CSU want a special Prime Minister’s Conference – on the subject of asylum.
The round of the Union's state parliament leaders - including their counterparts from the federal government and the EU - is increasing the pressure on the ongoing controversial issue of migration.
CSU state parliamentary group leader Klaus Holetschek and his Baden-Württemberg CDU counterpart Manuel Hagel did not spare themselves with accusations after the joint decision on Tuesday (February 1st): “social peace” was in danger, warned Holetschek.
But they also called for five concrete measures to get what the Union sees as “far too high access numbers” under control.
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The stocktaking of the Union parliamentary group leaders' conference on the asylum policy of the traffic light coalition was - unsurprisingly - bleak.
“Our municipalities are at the absolute limit or already far beyond it,” said Hagel, referring to the reception capacity of refugees in Germany.
“Our society is more upset than ever before,” he added.
Klaus Holetschek is closing ranks behind Markus Söder in Bavaria's state parliament - along with fellow CDU parliamentary group leaders, he is calling for asylum measures.
(Archive image) © IMAGO/Frank Hoermann/SVEN SIMON
“Negating” the still far too high access figures shows “a loss of reality on the part of the traffic light government,” it was said in a resolution by the 16 Union state parliamentary group leaders.
The group also took an indirect look at the recent demonstrations against right-wing extremism: the CDU and CSU interpreted it as a “confidence move by the middle population in the state’s ability to act”.
This trust must not be “destroyed through inaction”.
According to their paper, the conservatives were also dissatisfied with the traffic light's most recent activity: Hagel complained that the fact that the so-called Repatriation Improvement Act made it mandatory for refugees to have lawyers in deportation cases was the "next blight" on the traffic light.
“Every deportation case is already examined in accordance with the rule of law,” he emphasized.
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The solution should now be brought by a Prime Minister's Conference - the format is still familiar from the Corona times.
The concrete wishes of the Union state parliament heads:
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Reform of asylum law
Implementation of asylum procedures in third countries
Returns at the external borders
Designation of further safe countries of origin
More speed with return agreements with other countries
“Needs-based” support and financing for municipalities
Out for planned asylum “duty defenders”
The decision sent to the media did not provide any further details.
However, the demands are largely known.
Traffic light representative Joachim Stamp (FDP), for example, is working on repatriation agreements - but so far without a major breakthrough.
The expansion of the list of “safe countries of origin” has always been contested within traffic lights.
And asylum procedures in third countries have also been discussed for a long time.
However, the feasibility of this idea is controversial.
In Great Britain, a court recently struck down the government's Rwanda plans.
New deportation law from Scholz's traffic light: too lax or too hard?
The Bundestag passed the “Repatriation Improvement Act” in January.
There was also criticism from other quarters at the time: “The plan involves far-reaching interventions in basic and human rights that are disproportionate to the effectiveness of the law,” said Ulrich Schneider, head of the General Joint Association at the time.
The law provides for 40 measures, including the elimination of the obligation to give advance notice of deportation after one year of toleration or easier access to cell phone data for people without ID documents.
Schneider called the new passage on public defenders a “glimmer of hope,” but also “actually a given.”
The Green Youth was also outraged by the deportation plans.
Saxony's state government still wants to stop the plans in the Federal Council.
And Holetschek's conclusion from a Bavarian perspective was bitter: “The majority of the population has lost trust in the Berlin traffic lights and the Chancellor.
The much-announced, ordered tour is a pipe dream.” In fact, the traffic light's path to law was also extremely bumpy: in December it was briefly removed from the agenda due to concerns from the Greens.
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