GERMANY: Merz under fire for ‘racist’ comment ― Government possibly close to deportation deal with Taliban ― Coalition disagreement over deportation centres ― Parliament votes to scrap fast-track citizenship ― Council of Europe visit focused on migrati…

• Chancellor Friedrich Merz is under fire following an apparently racist remark he made on a recent visit to the eastern state of Brandenburg.
• The Federal Government may be close to finalising a deal with the Taliban which would facilitate an increase in deportations to Afghanistan.
• A row has broken out between the parties in the ruling coalition about the possible use of deportation centres.
• The Bundestag has voted to repeal a law that enabled people to acquire fast-track citizenship.
• The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has focused on migration- and asylum-related issues as well as freedom of peaceful assembly and expression during a recent official visit to Germany.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz is under fire following an apparently racist remark he made on a recent visit to the eastern state of Brandenburg. Speaking to journalists in Potsdam on 14 October, Merz said that the number of people travelling to Germany in order to claim asylum had decreased by 60% since August 2024 but that “we still have this problem in the cityscape, and that is why the interior minister is working to carry out large-scale deportations”. The comments were immediately condemned by politicians from all sides. A group of Green party members wrote to Merz to demand that he apologised publicly for the “racist, hurtful and indecent” remarks to people who were affected by racism and marginalisation. Meanwhile, the Mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegener, who is a member of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said that his city was “diverse, international and cosmopolitan” and that “this will always be reflected in the cityscape”. While acknowledging that it experienced problems such as “violence, litter and crime” he stressed that any attempt to pin any of them on a single group was “wrong”. On 15 October, German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius tried to downplay the comments when he said that people were “reading too much into it”. However, a few days later, Merz appeared to double down on his statement saying: “I don’t know if you have children, but if you have daughters, ask them what I might have meant by that. I suspect you’ll get a pretty clear and straightforward answer. I have nothing to take back. On the contrary, I emphasise once again that we must change this”.

The Federal Government may be close to finalising a deal with the Taliban which would facilitate an increase in deportations to Afghanistan. On 11 October, Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt told the Pioneer news company: “The talks are very advanced, so we can assume that we will have an agreement very soon that we can also repatriate people to Afghanistan on regular scheduled flights”. He also said that officials from his ministry had held “technical talks with the authorities in Kabul”. Dobrindt had previously stated that the two deportation flights to Afghanistan that Germany had already carried out were “of great interest to many other countries”, a claim that appears to have been borne out on 18 October when a group of 19 EU member states plus Norway urged the European Commission to “prioritise the return of Afghan nationals living illegally in Europe, either voluntarily or by force”. In this context, Dobrindt also suggested after the Council of the EU meeting on 16 October that Germany could carry out deportations to Afghanistan on behalf of other EU member states.

A row has broken out between the parties in the ruling coalition about the possible use of deportation centres. On 4 October, Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt announced that he was hoping to set up detention centres to hold people who were due for deportation “indefinitely”. However, several members of the Social Democratic Party, with whom Dobrindt’s CDU party share power, have reportedly denounced the proposed move as “unconstitutional”. One SPD MP, Hakan Demir, told the Euronews news agency that although he felt that the centres may be legally possible “in principle”, “Whenever I ask: ‘Name me a country that makes this possible now and where the legal conditions are right’, I never get an answer”. The SPD members’ reactions were echoed by ECRE member organisation PRO ASYL who told the Deutschlandrundfunk radio station that the proposed centres were “undoable in a democracy”.

The Bundestag (lower house of German federal parliament) has voted to repeal a law that enabled people to acquire fast-track citizenship. On 8 October, a vast majority of MPs voted in favour of abolishing the law which had been put in place by the previous SPD-led government in July 2024 and which allowed people to apply for citizenship after three years of residency (down from five under the normal procedure) if they could show “advanced German comprehension and other proof of being well-integrated into German society”. According to research undertaken by the ZDF television broadcaster, the impact of the repeal of the law may be negligible given the very small number of naturalisations that took place via this channel. However, some opposition politicians have expressed concerns about the optics of the decision. Commenting on the outcome of the vote, the chair of the Green party, Felix Banaszak told the Web.de news website that it sent “the wrong signal at a time when we need all our strength – regardless of whether someone has been living here for three years or three generations”.

The Council of Europe (CoE) Commissioner for Human Rights has focused on migration- and asylum-related issues as well as freedom of peaceful assembly and expression during a recent official visit to Germany. According to an article published on the CoE website, Michael O’Flaherty “addressed related concerns regarding racism and discrimination, in particular antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred” during the visit which took place 13-17 October. The CoE also added that “repeated concerns were raised during the visit regarding asylum seekers being refused entry into Germany by federal border police, without an individual asylum procedure, and with little or no assessment of individual vulnerabilities”. It also reported that, having noted a recent judgement by the Berlin Administrative Court that found the forced return of three Somali asylum applicants unlawful, O’Flaherty had reiterated that “access to asylum and to individualised procedures in border settings are crucial to fulfil states’ obligations as regards the prohibitions of refoulement and of collective expulsion”.

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