While Germany’s next government is being forged in coalition talks between Friedrich Merz’s centre-right CDU and its likely partner, the centre-left SPD, the country’s top immigration official has this week dropped a bombshell. Hans-Eckhard Sommer, head of BAMF, the federal office for migration and refugees has called publicly for a complete overhaul of the German asylum system.

Speaking as a “private citizen” at the CDU-adjacent Konrad Adenauer Foundation think tank — itself an extraordinary move for a German civil servant — Sommer said migrants should no longer be able to apply for asylum or refugee status at the country’s land borders. This would effectively end the practice of migrants arriving without papers and applying for protection by uttering the word “asylum”. Under current rules, migrants who do so are provided with housing and welfare services while their cases are reviewed. This can mean years in limbo, beneficial neither for the migrant nor the state. “The current system is irresponsible towards those seeking protection and towards our own population,” Sommer said. “Internal security and social cohesion are being put at risk.”

Aside from the horrific, attention-grabbing attacks on innocent people by asylum-seekers and refugees in recent years, mass immigration is also weighing heavily on public services. Housing, health services, schools, social services are under severe strain while integration workers and language courses are few and far between.

The right to asylum was included in the West German constitution largely out of atonement, with an eye on the millions of people displaced by the rise of Nazism and the Second World War. But a growing number of moderate politicians say it’s no longer fit for purpose, such as centrist CDU MP Serap Güler, the daughter of Turkish “guest workers”. According to Güler, Turkish immigrants of the older generation had to work hard when they arrived in Germany, but now “so many people who, without being asked to do anything in return, are getting so much”. Güler, echoing Sommer and Chancellor-in-waiting Merz, is calling for asylum seekers to be turned back at the border.

That is, of course, easier said than done. Germany borders nine countries, none of them keen on dealing with migrants that it turns down. Besides, tight controls on 2,300 miles of borders are illusory within the European trade bloc which so vital to the German economy. Any checks would severely disrupt the flow of goods and require at least 10,000 new border officers, according to police union GdP.

So, in reality, asylum reform is unthinkable without EU-wide reform. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum is scheduled to go into effect in 2026, and will supposedly bring down the number of migrants settling in the EU. Under the plan, undocumented migrants arriving at Europe’s outer borders will be processed within a few weeks, thanks to new digitised procedures. Asylum decisions will be fast tracked and rejected applicants speedily deported. Sommer is skeptical about the feasibility of the scheme. “Why should states with external borders keep to the new rules,” he asked, “since they didn’t keep to the old ones either?” The EU has also announced plans to increase the number of officers in its border force Frontex.

Sommer says upper limits, which aren’t explicitly named in the pact, are necessary, but this would require amendments to the Geneva Convention, European treaties and the German constitution. Asked whether such radical changes would be inhumane, Sommer responded: “We bask in the fact that we help everyone, and we simply accept the inhumanity of this path.” In other words, the current system results in egregious failure to uphold human rights in that it creates incentives for unscrupulous people smugglers and uncertain conditions for migrants languishing in refugee centres.

Will the incoming coalition listen to voices like Sommer, who warns that “responsible politics senses when the tipping point has been reached?” Do Merz and his future junior partner, the SPD, possess the political energy to fashion a Migrationswende?

Alongside the war in Ukraine and rebooting the military, jumpstarting the stagnant economy and responding to Donald Trump’s trade war, immigration reform is just one of the mammoth tasks facing Germany. Not since after the Second World War has an incoming German government had so many pressing tasks on its to-do list. In the latest polls, support for the CDU has fallen to 25%, down from 28.5% in February’s election. At 24%, the anti-immigration AfD is nipping at Merz’s heels.

Already, it seems, voters are getting impatient.

---

Maurice Frank co-founded the English magazine Exberliner and now co-writes the newsletter 20 Percent Berlin. 

mauricetfrank

---