The frontrunner in the race to become Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, was set to propose a motion calling to end family reunification for migrants with subsidiary protection and give more power to federal police officers to deport migrants, among others.
Unlike the bill that was passed earlier this week, this proposal is legally binding. It means that it would become law if the CDU could secure enough votes and if it passed the parliament’s upper house, as reported by Euronews.
According to local media reports, as the debate was set to begin, the CDU requested a break. During the break, the CDU held talks with the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) as well as the Greens.
Today’s bill and the Wednesday one were both strongly opposed by the SPD and the Greens.
The new measures aiming to tighten border controls and turn away a larger number of migrants sparked mass protests in Germany. They were also strongly criticised by former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Permanent Border Controls
The frontrunner in the race to become Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, previously vowed new changes to the immigration policy, among them permanent border controls.
Merz’s comments followed the case of an Afghan asylum seeker who was taken into custody after a knife attack on January 22 in Aschaffenburg, which left two people dead.
Border Controls to Be Kept in Place
Yesterday, January 30, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that Germany will keep border controls in place until external border protection really takes effect.
The German Interior Minister’s comments came in the meeting of EU home affairs ministers held in Warsaw, Poland, to discuss migration policy, a day after the plans for tightened migration rules were backed by the German parliament.
The figures from Germany’s Interior Ministry recently revealed that a total of 43,500 people have been turned away from Germany over the past 15 months as a result of frontier checks.
