Germany’s conservative opposition party wants to send asylum-seekers to third countries for processing, seeming to follow a model pursued by the UK. But experts are divided over the legal and logistical workability.
The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) put the plans for sending asylum-seekers to third countries into the draft of its new "basic principles program" in early December. The document is to be approved in 2024.
Following the publication of the draft, CDU lawmaker Jens Spahn insisted that such plans would drastically reduce the amount of "irregular immigration" to Germany. "If we pull it off consistently for four, six or eight weeks, the numbers would go down dramatically," Spahn told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung before Christmas.
Spahn said the plans would deter migrants from attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea, and argued that several countries would be willing to make deals to process migrants. "Rwanda would probably be willing," Spahn said. "Ghana might be, too. We should also talk to Eastern European countries such as Georgia and Moldova."
Spahn’s comments come even though the United Kingdom’s deal with Rwanda, signed in 2022, hit a legal roadblock in November, when Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that "the removal of the claimants to Rwanda would expose them to a real risk of ill-treatment." The court found that there was no way of guaranteeing that the Rwandan asylum system was fair and humane.
Tanga igitekerezo