Germany’s current government is set on completely sealing the country’s borders to asylum seekers — by turning people away at the border, establishing return hubs, processing asylum applications offshore, and cooperating with the Islamist Taliban. In the process, it is going well beyond the restrictive framework of the new Common European Asylum System (CEAS), which will come into effect in 2026 and already strips refugees of many of their rights. But that is not enough for the coalition government of Christian and Social Democrats (CDU/CSU and SPD). They want “net zero” for asylum seeker arrivals and applications.
Christian Jakob is a journalist at the tageszeitung. He has published books on immigration, including Diktatoren als Türsteher, on the EU’s externalization of its border protection (with Simone Schlindwein, 2017), and Die Bleibenden (2016), on the history of the refugee movement in Germany.
The number of first-time asylum applications in Germany has in fact been falling. In the first half of 2025 it was about 61,000 — just half of the figure for the same period in 2024 and one-third of the figure for the first half of 2023. Yet even if the measures proposed by the current coalition government are empty symbolism, they could have a considerable impact on the cohesion and functioning of the European Union. For “people on the move”, all these developments mean fewer rights and more suffering and violence. Externalizing migration control also significantly increases Germany’s and the EU’s vulnerability to manipulation and blackmail by third states.
Slamming the Door
During the election campaign in early 2025, the CDU/CSU promised a radical change in immigration policy to restrict “humanitarian immigration to a level that our society is able to cope with”. In 2016, then-CSU Interior Minister Horst Seehofer defined the acceptable level as about 200,000 persons per year. In an early challenge to the right of asylum, Seehofer tried to enforce this figure as an “upper limit”. In 2024, before becoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz spoke of accepting a maximum of “60,000 to 100,000” asylum seekers annually. In 2025, his newly elected coalition government amended the residency laws to make limiting immigration a statutory objective. In light of this and other measures, it is increasingly clear that when Chancellor Merz and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt speak of “humanity and order”, they actually mean closing the borders and keeping refugees out.
In 2023, Thorsten Frei, now today Head of the Federal Chancellery, proposed abolishing the individual’s constitutional right of asylum under the Geneva Convention on Refugees. Instead, he said, the EU as a whole should offer an annual contingent of 300,000 to 400,000 places for the UNHCR’s resettlement programme. Even then, it was clear that there was no realistic prospect of the EU-27 achieving such a numbers on a voluntary basis.
For the sake of enforcing what they portray as the will of the people, conservatives in government are prepared to ride roughshod over fundamental rights.
Today, the CDU/CSU is demonstrating that it never had any intention of meaningfully participating in voluntary resettlement programmes. In July 2025 Interior Minister Dobrindt terminated humanitarian admission programmes for people in need of special protection, for example from Afghanistan (including Afghans who had worked for the German armed forces) and Turkey. He also denied the federal approval required to extend the city-state of Berlin’s programme for accepting Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees. The Interior Ministry also suspended the right of family reunification for persons under subsidiary protection for two years. That arrangement had already been restricted to 1,000 visas per month since 2023. At the end of 2024 there were about 381,000 persons under subsidiary protection living in Germany. Many of them will now suffer separation from their spouses, children, and/or parents for many more years.
In other words, contrary to the CDU/CSU’s assertions in opposition, the government they now lead is not planning to expand voluntary admission of people in need of protection through UN programmes. Merz and Dobrindt also want to make it impossible for refugees to enter Germany by their own means. But the measures they are now pursuing encounter push-back from other EU member states and from potential partners outside the EU.
Refusing Entry and Flouting the Law
After a headline-grabbing knife attack by a rejected asylum-seeker in January 2025, Friedrich Merz promised that if he won the election, the federal police would turn away anyone who attempted to enter Germany illegally, from his first day in government. He was already known for making provocative statements on immigration. The previous government had already (re-)introduced border controls in mid-2023.[1] Yet under EU law, people are permitted to enter a country for the purpose of applying for asylum. Merz, on the other hand, explicitly promised to turn away people with a right to protection, which many legal experts agree contravenes current law. The CDU/CSU insists it is legal.
On his first day in office, 7 May 2025, Interior Minister Dobrindt (CSU) ordered the Federal Police to refuse entry to asylum-seekers, with exceptions only for particularly vulnerable persons such as pregnant women, children, and victims of torture. In the seven weeks from 7 May to 30 June 2025 the federal police turned away a grand total of 284 asylum seekers. Seventy-nine especially vulnerable persons were permitted to enter and apply for asylum. In other words, the numbers stopped from entering represented only a tiny proportion of the total number of first-time asylum applications in the first half of 2025 — about 1.5 percent. This makes it clear that the border controls were essentially a symbolic but ineffective show of strength. According to a parliamentary inquiry tabled by Die Linke, the deployment of about 14,000 federal police to Germany’s borders costs an additional 8–10 million euro monthly. Even the police union criticized the controls as disproportionate. As the leader of its border police section, Andreas Roßkopf, said in July: “The number of asylum seekers turned away is in fact very small, compared to the enormous expense for the Federal Police.”
In multiple expedited proceedings in early June, the administrative court in Berlin ruled in favour of three Somali refugees who had been refused entry and sent back to Poland by the federal police in May 2025 in Frankfurt (Oder). Both Merz and Dobrindt made a point of challenging the ruling: “We know that we can still refuse entry”, Merz asserted. Dobrindt stated that there was “no reason … to change course”.
That fits with the creeping — and alarming — erosion of the rule of law by radical conservatives. In January 2025, Die Zeit reported an unnamed member of the CDU as saying that the entire party was sick to death of excuses that action couldn’t be taken because of some “stupid court” or because of European law or the Geneva Convention on Refugees. Jens Spahn, now leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, floated the idea of Germany leaving the European Convention on Human Rights in order to enable a stricter immigration policy in 2024. For the sake of enforcing what they portray as the will of the people, conservatives in government are prepared to ride roughshod over fundamental rights. This is an authoritarian development.
Externalizing Asylum
The British Rwanda Model
The idea of working with partner states to stop refugees long before they reach the EU’s external borders has been circulating in the EU for many years. But to date no democratic party has taken up that idea as enthusiastically as the German Christian democrats today. The CDU’s new policy statement, adopted in 2024, states:
“Everyone who applies for asylum in Europe should be sent to a safe third country for the duration of the asylum process. In the event of acceptance, the asylum seeker will be permitted to stay in the safe third country. Comprehensive contractual arrangements will be made with the safe third countries.”
That would mean deporting all asylum-seekers currently in the EU — in 2024 about 900,000 people — to as yet unidentified third states for their asylum procedures and potentially for permanent residence. That corresponds to the model proposed by the British Conservative governments from 2022, which proposed flying all refugees arriving in the UK to the East African state of Rwanda and conducting their asylum procedures there under Rwandan law. In the event of recognition, the UK was to have paid for the person to stay in Rwanda; for those rejected, London would have covered the costs of deportation from Rwanda to their country of origin. According to media reports, the preparations alone cost London about 770 million euro.
The scheme clearly contravenes European law and was repeatedly held up by the British courts. Tory deputy party chair Lee Anderson said that the British people had been “very patient … and now they’re demanding action”. “I think we should ignore the laws and send them straight back the same day.” Although the Labour government dropped the scheme in 2024, Dobrindt (at the time leader of the CSU caucus in the Bundestag) was undaunted. He visited Rwanda in March 2024 and spoke of it as a “serious option” for Germany to send asylum-seekers there.
Germany began deporting convicted criminals to Afghanistan in summer 2024, and now intends to expand the practice. To make that possible, Germany is conniving with the Taliban.
If the money is right, they may yet persuade some African state or other to accept a couple of symbolic planeloads of refugees from Europe. But in practical terms Dobrindt might as well promise to fly them to the moon. The idea of shipping all arriving refugees to Africa is utterly illusory. For one thing, because many African states are turning away from the West and towards Russia, but also because the African Union categorically rejects any form of externalized EU refugee camp anywhere in Africa. That has been clear since 2019, when the EU Commission floated the idea of “Regional Disembarkation Platforms”.
The Albania Model
While the Rwanda option has apparently been dropped, work continues on other, similar ideas. One variant is an Italian concept for handling refugees detained in the Mediterranean en route to Europe. The plan was to accommodate them in an Italian-run camp in Albania for the duration of their asylum procedures, starting in May 2024. Those who were accepted would have been permitted to travel on to Italy. Those who were not were to be deported directly from Albania. Legal experts agreed that this would only be legal if those affected had not yet set foot on EU territory. Nevertheless, in 2023 the Christian democrat–led states urged the SPD-led coalition to consider whether Germany could pursue a similar model. The relevant Interior Ministry report, published in April 2025, noted that “substantial legislative amendments” would be required and that “significant difficulties” were to be expected.
Italy’s Albania scheme was repeatedly stopped by the Italian courts, and has now been largely abandoned. The previous government’s special representative for migration agreements, Joachim Stamp of the FDP, spoke shortly after his appointment in early 2023 about wanting to look into the possibility of offshoring asylum procedures to North Africa. He left office in May 2025 without having found an African government willing to do so.
Return Hubs
In mid-2024, in light of its own significant legal reservations over the Albania model and the lack of progress realizing it, the EU Commission proposed the establishment of so-called return hubs. These are camps for asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected but cannot be deported from the EU to their country of origin. The plan is to send them to a third country instead.
The EU hopes to persuade third countries to permit the creation of such camps on their territory. Deportees from Europe would be interned there, potentially indefinitely and under prison-like conditions. If it ever became possible to return them to their country of origin, they would be sent there. Otherwise nobody seems to care, as long as they are removed from the EU. The EU interior ministers agreed in late July 2025 to amend the EU’s definition of “safe third countries” in order to permit deportations to third countries even without the “connecting element” that has to date been required in the EU’s asylum system CEAS.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has already instituted a comparable arrangement with El Salvador’s dictator Nayib Bukele, deporting immigrants — who are not from El Salvador — to Bukele’s high security prison. In future, Washington plans to deport people to Libya and South Sudan, again including people not from those countries. The worse the destination, the better the plan, is the cynical motto.
For those affected, models like these mean potentially being interned for a very long time in an unfamiliar place under uncertain conditions. If implemented, such models would invite buck-passing between the European Union and the partner state, with few legal protections for the refugees, and doubts over the provision of basic necessities.
Countries of Origin
Sending rejected asylum seekers to “safe third countries” is not the German Interior Ministry’s preferred option. Returning them to their country of origin — voluntarily or not — is its first choice.
“Safe Countries of Origin”
In asylum law the category of “safe countries of origin” provides an instrument to expedite deportations. Although a person from a “safe country of origin” can still apply for asylum in Germany, their application can be rejected considerably more quickly and easily. Alongside the EU member states, Germany classes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, and Serbia as “safe countries of origin”, as well as Ghana und Senegal in Africa. The list was adopted by the German Bundestag and approved by the upper chamber, the Bundesrat. The CDU/CSU has long wanted to expand the list, first and foremost to include Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and India.
Die Linke and the Greens reject this, in part on account of persecution of LGBTIQ+ people in the Maghreb countries. Currently those two parties together have the votes to block any expansion of the list in the Bundesrat. Dobrindt wants to change the law to allow him to add countries to the list by decree, without need to consult parliament. The Interior Ministry introduced legislation to this effect in July 2025. The Expert Council on Integration and Migration, which is funded by the Interior Ministry, warned of “constitutional risks”, and noted that the process by which a country is classed as safe country of origin is “a black box”. “There is still a lack of transparent and dependable criteria for assessing a country’s risk, taking into account minorities and vulnerable groups.”
Afghanistan
At the end of 2024 there were about 442,000 people from Afghanistan living in Germany. About 29,000 of them are under obligation to leave, while roughly 285,000 have only temporary residency status. The country’s human rights situation has deteriorated significantly since the radical Islamist Taliban returned to power in 2021. Germany began deporting convicted criminals to Afghanistan in summer 2024, and now intends to expand the practice. To make that possible, Germany is conniving with the Taliban.
Germany’s efforts to keep the Taliban out of power cost the lives of 59 German soldiers between 2001 and 2021. Tens of thousands of Afghans died in the war. By the time Kabul fell in 2021, Germany alone had spent at least 12.5 billion euro on its military operations in Afghanistan, according to a parliamentary inquiry tabled by Die Linke. The Taliban is still listed as a terrorist organization, and no country other than Russia has recognized its government.
Many conservatives fall for the fallacy that they can beat their far-right rivals with radical anti-asylum policies. Instead, their enthusiasm for dismantling constitutional protections and chipping away at the rule of law undermines public trust in institutions.
The CDU/CSU never tires of warning of the dangers of radical Islamism. Yet rather than ostracizing the Taliban regime, Dobrindt does deals and curries favour for the sake of a couple of deportation flights. In mid-July 2025 Germany permitted the Taliban to send official envoys. The Taliban now has a diplomatic mission in Berlin, which will coordinate future deportations to Kabul.
CEAS
The EU’s new asylum system CEAS was adopted in 2024, but was originally conceived in 2019 by the German Interior Ministry under Horst Seehofer of the CSU. One of its provisions is routine internment of arriving refugees in camps at the EU’s external borders, where they will be screened and may be selected for expedited asylum processing. In the event of rejection, they are to be deported directly from the camps. All 27 EU member states are required to implement CEAS in their national legislation by June 2026. The EU initially set aside 3 billion euro to assist with implementation. A dedicated “Technical Support Instrument” supports the member states, in particular in establishing the camp infrastructure required for the new border procedures. A progress report of June 2025 speaks of “challenges” in implementation. Certain member states “already have the reception facilities and human resources … in place”. “Others have concrete plans … for the required infrastructure and personnel.” The report notes that an exercise carried out in Romania in 2024 had been “useful to test screening operations and share experience with other Member States”. Altogether, the Commission wants sufficient capacity to process 30,000 asylum seekers, and has set targets for each member state. Italy, which has long maritime external borders, is to provide 8,019 places. Germany’s target is just 374 places, because the only practicable way for asylum-seekers to reach Germany directly from outside the EU is by air.
In July 2025 the German Institute for Human Rights published an assessment of the implementation of the CEAS in Germany. It notes that the CEAS “enormously expands the possibilities to curtail the freedom of asylum seekers and/or to detain them”. The system, the document continues, “interferes significantly with their fundamental rights” and restricts their ability to live as they choose.
Summary
Fear of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has driven the CDU/CSU to demonstratively violate one taboo after another in its immigration policies. The CSU-led Interior Ministry is prepared to openly attack fundamental rights and the legal system itself. The demonization of refugees and irregular immigration weakens democracy by strengthening the desire for unconstitutional and authoritarian options. It seems only yesterday that the objective of asylum and immigration policy (at least in theory) was “safe, orderly” migration paths. Today, conservatives and the far right alike regard the EU as a tool for clamping down on immigration.
The coalition’s claim to be “harmonizing humanity and order” in its asylum policy is a hollow phrase. Its real aim is to dismantle the existing asylum law. Germany’s historical responsibility for refugee protection is rapidly being forgotten. The talk of Germany supposedly being overstretched is grotesque in light of the enormous burden shouldered by the less prosperous states of the Global South, which shelter and feed the bulk of the growing global numbers of displaced persons.
Many conservatives fall for the fallacy that they can beat their far-right rivals with radical anti-asylum policies. Instead their enthusiasm for dismantling constitutional protections and chipping away at the rule of law undermines public trust in institutions — and thus also in parties like the CDU and CSU themselves. Adopting the anti-immigration demands of far-right parties and anti-democratic actors like Viktor Orbán only bolsters them and weakens the EU. Demonizing immigration endangers our security, because actors like Russia have identified migration as a field in which they can work with far-right forces to destabilize the EU. Moreover, the EU’s insistence that African countries cooperate with deportations and other anti-immigration measures has strengthened anti-colonial currents in those countries and encouraged them to turn away from the West and towards Russia. With migration as with anything else: if you undermine other people’s fundamental rights, you risk losing your own.
Translated by Meredith Dale and Marty Hiatt for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
[1] From December 2021 until early 2025, Germany was governed by a coalition led by the social democrat Olaf Scholz. It was composed of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), The Greens, and the free-market liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
[2] Under the Dublin principle, asylum-seekers are required to remain in the country that is responsible for processing their application. This is normally the country through which they first entered the European Union. As a result, countries on the EU’s external borders, such as Greece, bear a disproportionate share of the cost and effort of receiving refugees.
