BUND-LANDER meeting: Interior Ministers’ Conference: Security on the train and deportation

At their spring conference, the interior ministers of the federal and state governments want to advise against electronic ankle skills for violent offenders, combating sexual violence against children and adolescents and dealing with the AfD. The new Federal Minister of the Interior, Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), will have to answer the question at the three -day conference – like his predecessor Nancy Faeser from the SPD – when the next deportation flight for offenders and dangerous Islamists will start to Afghanistan.

On the agenda of the meeting in Bremerhaven, which will open on Wednesday evening, there are also topics such as strengthening population protection and civil defense, bets in amateur sport and dealing with New Year’s Eve fireworks. The countries want more design options when setting up so -called fireplace ban. This year Bremen’s interior senator Ulrich Mäurer (SPD) is chairman of the Interior Ministers’ Conference. The editorial network Germany (rnd) said Mäurer: “I would like to ban private New Year’s fireworks.” Together with Berlin, he presented a pragmatic proposal. The municipalities should decide for themselves to ban fireworks where it causes problems.

More police officers on trains

According to information from the German Press Agency, there is largely agreed on nationwide measures to improve security on trains. Here a recommendation of a federal-state working group should be taken up to allow enforcement officers from the federal police even then to use free use of trains if they are not in uniform. How the civil servants have to identify themselves in such a case in the ticket control was still the subject of advice.

Deportations to Afghanistan

Now that the Union again provides the Federal Minister of the Interior, the inner ministers with CDU or CSU party book is less criticized by the federal government than at the previous meetings of the round. The Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told the “Augsburger Allgemeine” that it would also be “intensively talking about how the current refugee situation can be assessed”. This includes the implementation of further measures and the exchange of experiences on the impact of border controls. “We have to continue the migration turn,” said the CSU politician.

From the Ministry of the Interior in Magdeburg it was also said that they wanted to give tailwind for the migration turnaround initiated at the federal level. Saxony-Anhalt Interior Minister Tamara Zieschang (CDU) praises the tightened border controls, but at the same time emphasizes: “It is clear that further measures have to follow.” In their view, the deportation continues to include the deportation of “dangers” and criminals – also to Afghanistan and Syria.

Since the takeover by the Islamist Taliban in Kabul 2021, Germany has also not been deported to Afghanistan – with one exception. With the help of Qatar, 28 offenders were flown to Kabul in August last year. In order to enable deportations to Syria again, Faeser had contacted the Syrian transitional government shortly before she left the office.

Practical questions about deportations

The federal states had also recently approached the federal government to make the procurement of passenger substitutes more effective. Since 2018, the Federal Police and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) have been taking care of procuring them for returns from people without identification documents for those who are obliged to leave out of 32 countries of origin.

Dealing with AfD not on the agenda

The call of some social groups and politicians after an AfD ban is not on the agenda in Bremerhaven. Such a ban could apply for the federal government, the Bundestag or Federal Council. In the end, the Federal Constitutional Court would have to decide.

The current report of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, on the basis of which the party service had classified the party as secure right -wing extremist endeavor at the beginning of May, is not part of the official agenda.

The heads of the department practice reluctance because the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has promised not to observe the AfD until a decision by the Cologne Administrative Court, but continue to work as a suspicion. In addition, Dobrindt, Bavaria’s Interior Minister Herrmann and several CDU interior ministers would like to end the debate debate. They consider a corresponding application to be expedient and prefer to attack the party politically. Dobrindt confirmed in the ARD “daily topics” that a prohibition procedure would be water on the mills of the victim narrative of the AfD. He prefers to “govern” the AfD.

Dobrindt had pointed out this week, on questions from journalists to deal with AfD members in the civil service – now and in the event that the new classification by the constitutional protection in court – pointed out that mere party membership was not a reason for discharge or non -setting. The CSU politician said that if someone affirms the belonging to an extremist association, in individual cases to the “attitude to this extremist ideas”. This would then be checked and questioned accordingly “and then made the necessary decisions”.