In Wolfgang Kubicki’s Bundestag office there is a painting behind the desk that shows a scene during the Kiel Week. Sailing boats can be seen, but not Kubicki’s own motorboat. The Bundestag Vice President and Deputy FDP Chairman takes it with humor that he recently got into distress with this of all things when he had the Bundestag Presidium on board. On the other hand, he takes the migration debate very seriously.
SZ: Mr. Kubicki, the Chancellor has spoken out about the EU asylum compromise, which the Greens initially wanted to block. Does this mean the situation has been pacified?
Wolfgang Kubicki: Maybe within the coalition. Socially, that won’t be enough. I’ve been traveling around the country a lot lately, and I can tell you: the mood has already changed. The states of exhaustion among volunteers and local representatives are considerable; people don’t want any more. Most people I have met say: enough is enough now. In my home town of Strande we will probably have to put up tents now because even the containers have become scarce. There must be a signal from the democratic center that we are serious about limiting immigration.
Will the migration issue decide the future of traffic lights?
My group leader Christian Dürr rightly said that this decision at EU level will determine the continued existence of the coalition. Not because we want to leave them. But because we will no longer get support from voters for them. We will not successfully contest the next federal election, neither as a coalition nor as individual parties, if the migration problem is not solved. And just look at Bavaria: If the traffic light parties together don’t get over 25 percent in the state elections there, that would be a disaster. The Chancellor is already being asked to do more from within his own party, for example from countries governed by the SPD. He knew full well that if he had allowed Annalena Baerbock to prevent a common European solution, his Social Democrats would no longer have had to run in the three upcoming elections in East Germany.
This week, your group adopted a paper on migration policy that – to put it simply – can be summarized as: more hardship and fewer benefits. Do you want to annoy the Greens so much that they voluntarily leave the coalition?
We already have many legal options for the things we demand in the paper – they are just not being used. For example, the federal government can now encourage the states to actually enforce deportations. The federal government must not tolerate a “winter deportation stop”, as has already been the case – and in case of doubt it must use the constitutionally provided means of federal coercion. There is also a legal requirement for asylum seekers to work. The first mayors are already saying that we’ll let these young men take care of the park or sweep the streets. I think that’s right too. And we could now transfer legally rejected asylum seekers to third countries if we have reached an appropriate agreement with them.
Nevertheless, these are all measures that the Greens vehemently reject.
The most important factor is to break the framing that in fact everyone who has reached Germany can stay here in the end and receive all the benefits that our welfare state is capable of. It is also important in this context that asylum seekers and those entitled to asylum can no longer transfer cash benefits to their home countries. Otherwise, German taxpayers will ultimately finance the smuggling gangs. My aim is to limit the influx. But we will only limit this if it is clear that those who have no chance of staying here will no longer receive any benefits and will be quickly repatriated – to their home countries or to a third country that is willing to accept them. It would therefore be a sensible German domestic and foreign policy to now look at which third countries there are that would accept foreigners who are obliged to leave the country.
Do you think such demands are the right way to prevent the AfD from gaining further strength?
I don’t want all democratic parties except the Left and the CDU to be thrown out in one of the next elections in East Germany and the AfD to get an absolute majority. God save us from such a situation! That would no longer be tradable for us domestically.
But aren’t your demands threatening to turn towards populism?
I see no problem if we look for solutions within the democratic and constitutional system. I see a huge problem when, like the AfD, you demand that Germany leave the EU and close the borders. This is not only illusory, but also unconstitutional. But we must want to do everything that is possible under the rule of law. For example, asylum seekers who have been legally rejected are not entitled to continue receiving social benefits. You are entitled to the minimum subsistence level, which means food, accommodation, warmth, medical care – but not necessarily in Germany. We should take seriously what former Federal President Joachim Gauck said. If we don’t deal with the problem from the democratic center, possibly with measures that are painful for ourselves, then the political fringes will do it.
In its migration paper, your group calls for refugees to only be distributed among the municipalities once they have been recognized. But that would make large initial reception centers necessary with all the associated difficulties. Can Germany actually allow itself to do that?
This approach makes sense. It does not make sense to distribute people to municipalities that no longer have any capacity to accommodate them. Because this has fatal consequences on site, including large groups of young men gathering in public places in the evenings and at night. If citizens then say that they are not comfortable with the fact that their city is changing its face, then as a politician I cannot simply say: You don’t have to worry.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser now wants stationary border controls at the borders with the Czech Republic and Poland. Does the FDP parliamentary group think this makes sense?
That depends on how the border controls are carried out. The fact is that thousands of illegal migrants are caught at the Bavarian border with Austria every year because of the border controls there. What you can prevent with such border controls is, for example, 40 people being crammed into a truck to get across the border. What you cannot prevent: people crossing borders on foot. Because we don’t have border fences and nobody wants them.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz and his general secretary Carsten Linnemann have offered the traffic light to join forces on the issue of migration. Do you need the Union?
I always ask Friedrich Merz why what he is now calling for has not been done in countries governed by the Union. But seriously: We need the Union just for the Federal Council, for example to classify other states as safe countries of origin. And: If we want to prevent the democratic center from being destroyed, then we would have to document to the population that, firstly, we are serious about limiting illegal immigration. And secondly, that we can create the greatest possible unity between the democratic parties on this issue.