Refugee groups accuse Germany of ‘pandering to populists’ with deportation rules

German refugee groups have accused Berlin of “pandering to populists” with new rules to deport people after failed asylum applications.

Amid a renewed increase in migration to Germany, and related public concern, the cabinet of chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday backed rules easing deportation procedures for authorities.

If approved by parliament, the measures will abolish pre-deportation notification, increase the period of pre-deportation detention from 10 to 28 days, and widen the scope of police and immigration officers to search properties and establish the identity of a deportee.

With asylum applications up 80 per cent this year in Germany, and at least 50,000 failed asylum applicants still in the country, Mr Scholz has promised his government will “finally start deporting en masse those who have no right to be in Germany”.

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On Wednesday federal interior minister Nancy Faeser said that, while deportations were up more than a quarter this year, new rules would expedite still further the deportation of traffickers and failed asylum seekers with criminal records.

“To protect the fundamental right to asylum, we must significantly limit irregular migration,” she said. “Those who have no right to stay must leave our country again.”

It remains unclear what difference – if any – the new rules will make given many rejected asylum seekers are still entitled to remain for various reasons including illness, a lack of ID or a child with residency status.

Germany’s police unions complained that the new competences were not backed with additional resources, while migration experts found little in the draft legislation about how Berlin will force home countries to take back their citizens.

Months of political standstill on migration questions was a key factor in two regional election disasters for Mr Scholz and his Social Democratic Party (SPD). Amid a surge in support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a new political alliance presented plans this week to set up a left-wing populist party also offering populist migration policies.

For Berlin macro-sociologist Steffen Mau, the tougher rhetoric from Berlin and Wednesday’s draft legislation was motivated more by political than migration concerns.

“Of course it’s an attempt to react to a political discourse that has shifted [the] migration question into the centre of attention,” said Prof Mau of Berlin’s Humboldt University and a member of a federal commission on migration and integration.

In an unusual move, Mr Scholz has written to opposition leader Friedrich Merz, chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Mr Scholz is seeking CDU support for the migration changes in the Bundestag, and also greater backing from CDU-controlled federal states.

This cross-party approach has irritated and unsettled the chancellor’s Green and Free Democratic Party (FDP) coalition partners, with some MPs fearing a revival of old CDU-SPD grand coalition habits.

The mood is particularly heated among leftist Green members who see in the migration pact a further betrayal of its political values.

“It is likely the law, in its current form, is incompatible with the constitution,” said Julian Pahlka, a Green MP and member of the Bundestag interior affairs committee.

Meanwhile, refugee lobby group Pro Asyl accused the Scholz administration of “pandering to populist debates” by backing what it called “grave interventions in fundamental right without any proportionality”.

The number of people requesting asylum in the EU has risen 38 per cent since 2019 to nearly one million last year, close to the last record in 2015 and 2016.

A quarter of all those requests were made in Germany, making it one of the states with the highest rates of applications per capita.