December 10, 2024 - 4:30pm
Since the dramatic fall of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship in Syria at the weekend, much of the West has debated the geopolitical implications and wondered whether to rejoice or expect a rejuvenation of jihadist activity in the region. But Germany’s immediate hopes and fears are focused on matters much closer to home.
Just one day after the fall of the Assad regime, a heated debate broke out in Germany on the status of the nearly one million Syrian nationals in the country. Alexander Throm of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), currently in opposition, argued that the situation in Syria had “fundamentally changed” and that this might put the refugee status of Syrians into question. He added that “it should be clear to everyone: asylum is a temporary stay.”
Some of Throm’s colleagues presented remarkably specific plans. Jens Spahn, deputy leader of the conservatives’ parliamentary group, suggested a two-pronged approach: “For anyone who wants to return to Syria we’ll charter flights and provide a starting fund of €1,000”, while the countries who took in the most refugees — Germany, Austria, Turkey and Jordan — would hold a “Reconstruction and Return Conference” on Syria.
The two Left-leaning parties of the ruling minority coalition are vehemently opposed to such discussions. The Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned the debate as “party-political”. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party called it “unprofessional” to speculate on the fate of Syrian refugees while the future of their home country remains uncertain.
However, Faeser’s ministry has now suspended the processing of Syrian asylum applications. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is putting the 47,000 open cases from Syrians “to the bottom of the pile”, as a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior put it yesterday.
This goes beyond just being an administrative matter. Syrian refugees symbolise more than any other group the seismic shift in Germany’s immigration and asylum policy since Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than one million people into the country in 2015 — largely triggered by the Syrian civil war. Since then, Syria has been the single largest country of origin for asylum seekers arriving in Germany, with their number increasing nearly ninefold since 2014.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAsylum should always be temporary.
The entire discussion around this issue is completely unhinged.
Indeed. Most of the salient points have been well made in today’s article by Henry Hill on Syrians in the UK.
The author of this piece should have read it before providing a less than forthright account of the German situation.
The title is way off the mark. I’m not sure how a debate can be “reignited” if it never stopped. I think a more appropriate description would be “the debate was aggravated”.
“All the while, Germany’s mainstream parties fail to understand that they are continuing to allow the populist fringes to set the tone” – Dear Katja, could you please refrain from insulting people who are a little more concerned than you about the future of the country that is still called Germany?
Parties like AfD will continue to grow in Europe until the mainstream parties get to grips with the migrant/fake asylum problem.
Populist parties of ‘left’ and ‘right’. which have someone shallow labels nowadays. exist now because the established or legacy parties failed to deliver on the back of votes to reject Lisbon Treaty, Financial Crash, widespread self defeating austerity, massive counter productive legal volumes of migration and an ever increasingly failing to deliver economic model.
Exactly, Left and Right are almost meaningless today. I am on the ‘left’ but these days have more in common with Tucker Carlson or Nigle Farage on issues like Ukraine than most of the ‘left’
A modest remark about asylum seekers. I didn’t find a single woman in the illustrative photo. This makes me think sadly.
Permanent asylum is madness.
The populist parties might be “setting the tone”, but what good is that when the political class ignore them?