German chancellor Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz, the opposition leader who wants to replace him in a year’s time, have traded verbal blows in a heated Bundestag standoff over irregular migration.
Clenching his fists, Mr Scholz lashed out at Mr Merz for suggesting on Tuesday that Germany’s “leaderless” federal government had “lost control” of immigration.
Mr Scholz told the Bundestag his government, led by his Social Democratic Party (SPD), was reshaping migration policy to welcome skilled labour and tackle irregular migration. He said this followed “years of neglect” under the watch of Mr Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) predecessors, Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel.
“You want serious politics from us and I am happy to spell the word for you,” said Mr Scholz, amid sustained heckling from the CDU benches. “You’re the ones who achieved nothing, lots of talk but no action.”
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After announcing controls on all national borders from next Monday, the Scholz coalition proposes detaining asylum applicants near the German border until it can be confirmed that they have not filed applications elsewhere in the EU.
Other proposals include a cut to asylum seeker welfare entitlements and bringing forward the introduction of a joint EU asylum database, part of a common migration and asylum plan due to be active by June 2026.
German politics – and state elections – were shaken up by a fatal knife attack last month, allegedly carried out by a failed asylum seeker from Syria.
The recent election victory of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), the first election win for a far-right party in the country since the Nazi era, is also concentrating minds in Berlin.
Amid demands for tougher migration measures, federal interior minister Nancy Faeser told the European Commission she believed the border controls from Monday were justified by “threats to public safety and order” from an “unacceptable” rise of irregular migration. Until July, Germany clocked up 50,000 cases, slightly down from the 56,000 cases reported in the same period of 2023.
In a letter to the European Commission, she said local authorities were “increasingly reaching the limits of what can be achieved in terms of reception, accommodation and care”.
Recent incidents of knife crime, she added, had led to a “massive impairment of the population’s sense of security and domestic peace”.
The proposals have attracted criticism from Mr Scholz’s Green coalition partners for being too hard – and from Mr Merz for not being hard enough.
Breaking with the Merkel era, Mr Merz said that “comprehensive returns at Germany’s national borders are legally permissible, practically possible and – in light of the current situation – politically necessary”.
While senior SPD officials fume over the failed migration meeting, Mr Merz said claims that CDU leaders “staged” their walkout of migration talks was “outrageous, utterly outrageous”.
Germany’s police union is sceptical, warning that the country’s 16 federal states lack the necessary court and jail-holding capacity to realise the plans. It said Germany’s external border – totalling nearly 4,000km across nine countries – is “impossible” to cover.
[ Germany announces plans to introduce checks on all bordersOpens in new window ]
“People who are up to no good, terrorists, Islamists who want to harm our constitutional order will certainly find a way to circumvent these controls,” said Andreas Rosskopf, head of the police union’s customs section.
Reaction across Europe varied according to political convictions. Leaders in Poland and Austria have criticised the plans while Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, a long-time advocate of closed EU borders, said: “If Germany can do it, why not?”
Hungary’s right-wing populist prime minister, Victor Orban, another proponent of border controls, commented on Twitter/X: “Chancellor Scholz, welcome to the club.”
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