Controversial asylum push
CDU politician Frei wants to reject illegal migrants on Europe’s coasts
At the beginning of the week, CDU politician Thorsten Frei had already proposed the extensive abolition of individual entitlements to asylum
© Soeren Stache / dpa central image / DPA
CDU man Thorsten Frei caused a stir with his push for asylum law. A new requirement for dealing with refugees in the Mediterranean is likely to have the same effect.
After his controversial asylum initiative, the first parliamentary director of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei, followed suit. He spoke out in the “world” for tougher action against refugees who come to Europe by sea. “It must be possible to turn back illegal migrants on Europe’s shores,” he said. If boats are apprehended in international waters in the Mediterranean, the people on board would of course be rescued. “But the journey then does not lead to a European shore, but back to where they came from.”
When asked whether he was in favor of legalizing so-called pushbacks, Frei said: “If someone is apprehended without protection in international waters,” the voyage does not have to lead to a European port. “Emotionally charged, unclear legal terms such as pushbacks” are not very helpful for a factual debate.
Pushbacks, i.e. rejecting people seeking protection at the external borders, are illegal under international law. Nonetheless, Greece, for example, on the Mediterranean coast, is suspected of systematically pushing back migrants to Turkey. Aid organizations accuse the government in Athens of this. There are also research and reports from the media about this again and again.
CDU man Thorsten Frei also calls for a reform of the asylum law
At the beginning of the week, Frei had already proposed the extensive abolition of individual entitlements to asylum. In a guest article for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, he advocated replacing this with a European quota solution for taking in refugees. 300,000 to 400,000 people per year should be selected directly abroad and then distributed in Europe.
Frei’s move had been sharply criticized by the traffic light parties. The federal government emphasized that it did not want to move away from the individual right to asylum.
The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz made it clear that the initiative was agreed with him. “This is an important and good contribution to solving a problem that we have been seeing for years and where there are currently no really good and convincing solutions,” he said on Wednesday at the retreat of the CSU state group in Andechs Monastery in Upper Bavaria. The sister party CSU reacted very cautiously to the advance. From their point of view, it is not suitable for quickly solving the current problems of the municipalities in coping with the sharp increase in the influx of refugees.
Boris Palmer supports Frei’s proposal
The CDU politician Frei received support from the non-party mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer. Frei’s concept would find much greater acceptance among “citizens who are skeptical about migration” than the current system, the former Green Party politician wrote in a guest article for “Welt” (Friday). This gives more and more people the impression “as if the state were helpless in the face of an ever-increasing number of poverty refugees who can force their way into their own village, their own neighborhood.”
It is “visible in every village and at every train station that we are taking in a large number of people who make no contribution to our economy and have no right to asylum,” Palmer continued. Showing these people in a legal process at the external borders that they are not allowed to immigrate to Europe is “fair and necessary”.