It was only a few years ago that Annalena Baerbock, then head of the Greens, said that European sea rescue was “the first point” that had to be “built up”. Now, gnashing its teeth, it is supporting a massive tightening of asylum law at the external borders. It was very late in letting the public take part in this change in thinking. That was a mistake.
Border procedures are to take place in the future, and families with children are no exception. They should be able to be deported to their home countries even without a court decision. People fleeing violence from Syria or Afghanistan could be deported back to Turkey because this is a safe country of origin.
In all likelihood, the federal government will support this because there is a historic opportunity for a pan-European reform of the asylum system and because the German municipalities are overwhelmed by the number of arrivals. For Baerbock and some others, this is against their beliefs.
In the political arena, in such a case, the following usually applies: if you do something against your views, you pay dearly for it. But Baerbock didn’t let the German public participate in the process at all. In the back room, the traffic light partners negotiated that they will largely agree to the EU Commission’s proposals.
If she had wanted to have greater negotiating weight, she could have let the public participate. After all, she knew that the Greens’ base would not accept such an about-face without objection. But she didn’t because she obviously didn’t want to.
The European Union wants to be a place that wants to respect human rights, according to the Charter of Fundamental Rights. But particularly in the Mediterranean, human rights are literally being trampled on. Research of the “Süddeutsche Zeitungshowed that the Italian Coast Guard failed to assist a boat with 182 people on board despite indications that it was in distress. 94 people died, including at least 35 children. One of them was called Sultan Almulqi, six years old, he died in his brother’s arms.
How seriously do we take the rights that everyone should have?
Valerie Hoehne
You are not the only ones. According to the International Organization for Migration, 72 children have died in the Mediterranean in 2023. The European Union let them die. Since Operation Sophia ended in 2019, which was supposed to arrest people smugglers and save refugees, there has been no state sea rescue at all.
Baerbock could have worked to make the resumption of state sea rescue a condition for her approval of the tightening of asylum law. As it is, the continent will only rely on isolation in the future. And we have to ask ourselves as a society: How seriously do we take the rights that every human being should be entitled to?
In all likelihood, flight will not become less in the future, but rather more. People will continue to try to get to Europe via the Mediterranean. They will succeed less often, even if they are fleeing war and persecution and have a right to asylum. The climate crisis, which will probably lead to a shortage of resources in the medium term (if we don’t fight it successfully, also in the long term), will contribute to this.
The tightening of asylum law undermines the narrative of the federal government, especially the foreign minister, that they want a “value-based foreign policy”. The government has not even found it necessary to discuss it with civil society.
If Baerbock insists on the observance of human rights in other countries in the future, she will be rightly pointed out that Germany is watching when men, women and children drown in the Mediterranean. The federal government’s asylum policy is one thing above all: cynical.