Germany’s toughening on immigration sparks tense debate in Europe – Technologist

This autumn, Europe has opened up a new tense political phase on the inflammatory topic of immigration. Germany has reintroduced border controls at its intra-EU land borders and started deporting Afghan refugees to Kabul, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been threatening to send migrants from Budapest to Brussels by bus. According to several diplomats in the Belgian capital, the topic of immigration will be on the agenda at the mid-October summit of European leaders.

Since the start of the year, however, the number of irregular migrant arrivals recorded in the European Union by Frontex has fallen by 36% (113,400 arrivals by the end of July). The 27 EU member states finalized the “Pact on Migration and Asylum” in June, aimed at jointly managing these arrivals, all while signing migration agreements with Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon. However, this has not had the political impact that the parties in power had expected. Quite the contrary, in fact.

In June, the rise of far-right parties in the European elections – but also in France’s snap parliamentary elections and, more recently, in regional elections in two eastern German Länder – the triumphs of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland and anti-immigration left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance parties have brought the migration issue back to the fore.

The shock aroused by a succession of murderous attacks in Germany by radicalized refugees, in Mannheim at the end of May, and in Solingen at the end of August, has forced the country’s ruling coalition to take emergency measures at the end of the summer: Deporting 28 Afghan nationals, re-establishing regular controls on the country’s borders from September 16, reducing welfare benefits for certain refugees. It is a sudden about-face in what had, until now, been seen as one of Europe’s most open countries.

Donald Tusk judges it ‘unacceptable’

The political trend is heading toward further toughening of migration policy, which is set jointly between Brussels and the 27 member states, with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, due to detail the roadmap for the bloc’s future home affairs commissioner in the coming weeks. The position, which no country has requested to hold because of the risk of political backlash, could go to the Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib, a liberal.

Since 2015, the countries of the Schengen area, within which freedom of movement prevails, have frequently reintroduced intra-Schengen border controls for security reasons. France is no exception. By simultaneously announcing the re-establishment of controls at its borders with its nine neighboring countries, Germany is sending a strong message, which has earned it some hostile reactions from its European partners.

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