Friedrich Merz ‘gets new ammunition for his migration turn

Huch, that seems familiar? Whenever Robert Habeck wanted to make the cold numbers more tangible – and his own successes – the Green Economic Minister made use of this stylistic remedy. Now Nancy Faeser also effectively reaches under the desk and produces a cardboard board with bar diagrams three times.

The skilled worker immigration to Germany? Increased. The asylum applications? Sunk. Returns to the limits? There is plenty of 50,000 since October 2023. When Faeser keeps the beams in cameras in a smile with a smile in her view, she repeats for security: “So since October 2023: 50,000 rejections.”

Migration turn? The Interior Minister, who is only in office, wants it to be understood for a long time. Nancy Faeser’s balance sheet in migration policy, which she introduces in Berlin on Tuesday morning, comes to the black-red coalition talks.

Friedrich Merz, who is expected to be the next Chancellor from the CDU, has to deliver the migration turn that he has promised in the election campaign, his people see it. When he is already so smooth when it comes to debts.

Merz now receives shooting aid from a man who is subject to the Interior Minister Faeser: Hans-Eckard Sommer, President of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). With a bang, his speech from Monday afternoon burst into the black and red negotiations.

Sommer called for a “completely new protection system” at an event at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation; A factual abolition of the previous individual claim to asylum. As a private person, as the BAMF president claims. But his statements are nothing more than a settlement with German and European asylum policy – also with Faeser’s guidelines. Probably Chancellor Friedrich Merz is likely to ammunition the unexpected support for the coalition talks.

“Our actions have an effect,” says Faeser on Tuesday and claims that in terms of irregular migration, it is more consistent than the previous government. The social democrat punishes the initiative of her head of the Sommer’s head of Sommer-who was employed by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer in 2018 and is a member of the CSU-as a short-sighted and rash proposal.

Neither migration nor war refugees would get away with a kind of quota solution (as Summer suggested), argues Faeser. “That’s why no other country in Europe does it.” Especially since the right of asylum for the SPD is not available. Numerous measures have already been taken, others are also necessary, says Faeser. But not “simple suggestions that don’t help”.

In other words: Faeser is not a big fan.

Thorsten Frei, the Union faction manager and one of the boss negotiators of Schwarz-Rot, however. He showed himself open to Summer’s advance in the “early start” of RTL/NTV – after all, he had the individual right to asylum.

But it is not so crucial which way to go, said Frei. The goal is crucial. “And the goal must be: order, control and limit.” In recent years, between 240,000 and 350,000 asylum applications in Germany have always been made freely. With the other humanitarian migration, such as the refugees from Ukraine, this is too much for integration.

An accent shift also indicates in the SPD. Many noticed that Interior Minister Faeser is neither part of the so-called “19er round” of the Union and the SPD, i.e. the boss negotiation round, nor in the previous SPD working group for “inside, law, migration and integration”. Instead, Faeser negotiated about reducing bureaucracy and state modernization-as deputy AG leader.

But Faeser does not want to recognize her party in this, emphasizes that “very rigid” measures were taken and she does not believe that her party has even more striker regulations.

In fact, the traffic light government has decided many far-reaching measures to undertake a reform of the common European asylum system (GEAS) under Faeser in order to meet irregular migration more effectively at the external borders-in the end of the shoulder with the EU partners. A point that is particularly important to Faeser.

She insists that the wording in black and red exploratory paper, according to which rejections are carried out “in coordination” with Germany’s neighboring countries, is also meant as a common approach. “This is not a national topic, it is an international topic,” says Faeser. In the Union, the passage is more likely to be understood as in-knowledge replacement. Who will prevail?

Thorsten Frei, the Union faction manager,: Germany will always adhere to the right and law, pay attention to good agreement with the neighbors. However, one cannot make themselves dependent on them.