In the debate for stricter asylum laws Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) is in favor of rejecting refugees who have entered the country via safe third countries. “We have been calling for this in Brandenburg for a long time,” he told the news portal “t-online” on Saturday. He expects the federal level to make decisions quickly.
Woidke is willing to accept the legal risks associated with the suspension of the EU’s so-called Dublin Regulation: “The truth is that the Dublin Regulation is hardly being applied by other EU countries anymore either.” People expect solutions to be found immediately.
According to the Dublin Regulation, the country of first entry is responsible for an asylum application. The fact that Germany lets in asylum seekers for whom another country is responsible and then cannot deport them is “madness that no citizen understands anymore”.
The Prime Minister, who is running for another term in office in the state elections on September 22, bases his demand on the Basic Law. Article 16a states that “people who enter from a safe third country are not granted the right of asylum.” This existing law must be enforced.
The fact that he is closer to CDU leader Friedrich Merz than to his federal SPD with this demand shows that democratic parties are faced with the common challenge of finding solutions to this complex issue. “We must relieve the burden on local authorities and at the same time ensure that we know who is in our country and what their motives are,” warned Woidke.
In order to limit refugee migration to Germany, the federal government wants to detain asylum seekers for whom another EU state would be responsible under the Dublin Regulation in a kind of border procedure and send them back there as quickly as possible. The CDU and CSU, however, are calling for blanket rejections at the border. The government does not consider this to be compatible with European law. (epd)
