Germany ‘forming secret alliance of countries that can flip away migrants at their borders’
Germany is secretly forming an alliance of European countries that will turn away asylum seekers at their borders, it has been reported.
Friedrich Merz, the country’s next chancellor, has begun informal talks with neighbours France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland, according to The Telegraph.
While precise details of the plan remain unclear, Merz is under pressure to cut the number of refugee arrivals into Germany.
Concerns about immigration have been pushed to the forefront of German politics, heightened by a series of attacks carried out by Islamists and the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The AfD polled 20.8 per cent in the February elections, making them the second largest party in German.
Ahead of the elections in February, Merz, 69, the leader of the victorious Christian Democratic Union (CDU), promised to stop all illegal migration at Germany’s land borders.
While the new policy is still being worked out, he is said to have been strongly influenced by an initiative presented by Polish prime minister Donald Tusk in January.
In a speech upon taking the reins of the EU council, Tusk called illegal immigration ‘a threat to the security and territorial integrity of the entire union’ and suggested the need to use ‘all available leverage’ to force nations external to the US to take back their citizens.
Incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz is under pressure to cut the number of refugee arrivals into Germany
Merz insisted he would close Germany’s borders to all asylum seekers as one of his first acts in office after two people, including a two-year-old girl, were stabbed to death by an Afghan migrant, Enamullah O. (pictured) in a park in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria in January 2025
In January an Afghan asylum seeker stabbed a two-year-old boy of Moroccan origin and a passerby to death in a German park.
Enamullah O., 28, was arrested near the scene after attacking a group of children in a park in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. Two people were killed and three injured, police said.
The adult victim, a 41-year-old German, died while intervening to try to shield the children in Schoental Park from the kitchen knife-wielding attacker.
Following the attack, the German chancellor-in-waiting insisted he would close Germany’s borders to all asylum seekers as one of his first acts in office.
However the CDU is currenly locked in ongoing coalition talks with the third-placed Social Democratic Party (SDP),who are reluctant to greenlight the indiscriminate expulsion of migrants at the border.
The SDP have so far only agreed to refuse entry to migrants ‘in agreement with’ Germany’s direct European neighbours.
Merz now faces a challenge to get an agreement in place before he is officially named as chancelleor.
A new poll this week by INSA puts the AfD on 23.5 per cent, an all-time high, and suggests they are rapidly closing in on Merz’s conservatives who are on 27 per cent.
A new poll this week by INSA puts the hard-right AfD, led by Alice Weidel (pictured), on 23.5 per cent, an all-time high, suggesting they are rapidly closing in on Merz’s conservative CDU
A long line of migrants walks across Petit-Fort-Philippe Beach on January 2025 as they prepare to attempt the journey to the UK
Another small migrant boat prepares to depart from Petit-Fort-Philippe Beach in Gravelines, France, and head towards United Kingdom on January 17, 2025
The spike in the AfD’s support comes on the back of Merz negotiating the largest ever debt package in the country’s modern history in order to fund a rise in defence spending, which the AfD called ‘the biggest deception in post-war history’.
Berlin has argued that the EU Dublin Regulation, which states that each member state is responsible for examining an asylum application made by a third-country national, have ceased to be enforced by countries on the bloc’s external borders.
Germany has introduced spot checks at its borders but the ‘secret plans’ would go significantly further than those currently in place.
Nevertheless there is scepticism among many diplomats about whether Germany’s EU neighbours will accept Berlin’s latest plans.
Austria has threatened to refuse to accept immigrants turned away at the German border, a state of affairs which would lead to a fully-blown migration crisis within the EU if it comes to pass.
A European diplomat said: ‘This is a framing exercise by the CDU for core voters after having given in so much – no real merit in it so far. If they do it, it’ll be fantastic news for the UK and everyone near Germany. They will be stopping everyone.’
The envoy joked: ‘It will be bad news for Reform UK though because their main talking point will then be solved by the German chancellor’.
