Germany’s Leading Candidate Calls for Permanent Border Checks
(Bloomberg) -- Friedrich Merz, the conservative front-runner in the race for Germany’s chancellorship, called for a radical overhaul of the country’s migration policy including permanent border checks. The comments come after an asylum seeker from Afghanistan was taken into custody over a fatal stabbing of a two-year-old child and a man in a park on Wednesday.
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If elected chancellor in February, “there will be a de facto ban on entry into the Federal Republic of Germany for anyone who does not have valid entry documents or who make use of European freedom of movement,” Merz told reporters in Berlin on Thursday. “This also applies expressly to persons with a right to protection.”
European Union rules state that asylum is a fundamental right and international obligation.
The leader of Germany’s conservative CDU party called the existing migration rules “dysfunctional” and said he would suspend them as chancellor. “Germany must therefore make use of its right to the primacy of national law,” Merz said.
The knife attack in the city of Aschaffenburg near Frankfurt this week was the latest in a series of deadly incidents that have stoked debate about domestic security and immigration ahead of Germany’s snap election next month. Polls suggest that public frustration with the government’s policies has helped fuel a recent surge in support for extremist parties.
Members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government and Merz’s conservative bloc have repeatedly called for stricter immigration rules ahead of the Feb. 23 ballot. However, implementing tougher rules and making sure rejected asylum seekers do leave the country has proved difficult for authorities.
“I am sick and tired of seeing such acts of violence occurring here every few weeks — by perpetrators who have actually come to us to find protection here,” Scholz said Wednesday in a post on X.
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