“The EU Commission has dramatically lost power in its asylum policy in recent years,” said Seehofer of “Bild am Sonntag”. You have “so far not been able to find a remedy against the egoism of some EU member states”, including Austria. Reliable cooperation on migration for Germany currently only exists with France, said the conservative German interior minister.
Seehofer said that despite the recent advance of the radical Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan, he wanted to hold on to deportations to the country. “We are currently negotiating with Afghanistan so that we can continue to deport criminals there,” he told “Bild am Sonntag”. “How can you answer for the fact that criminals can no longer be returned to their home country?”
The former Bavarian Prime Minister also mentioned possibilities to “increase voluntary departure”. If a detainee gets some part of his sentence waived, he may leave voluntarily, said the interior minister. “We are in talks with all federal states because they are responsible for deportations,” he added.
After the end of the pandemic, Seehofer wants to significantly increase the number of deportations again according to “Bild am Sonntag”. “The Corona period was not the time for deportations. Every country in the world is afraid of imported infections,” said the CSU politician. “We will increase that again significantly after Corona”.
In the face of numerous offensives by the Taliban, the opposition Greens recently insisted on an end to deportations to Afghanistan. The German government continues to pretend that “nothing has happened” in Afghanistan, criticized Green leader Robert Habeck of the situation assessments made by the Foreign Office in July. These would have to be revised and deportations suspended, he demanded in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” (FAS). Since the start of the withdrawal of foreign troops, the Taliban have brought numerous districts under their control in Afghanistan and now rule large parts of the country.
