BERLIN: Germany’s interior minister is hoping the European Union can reach a bloc-wide agreement on sending failed asylum seekers who cannot go home to safe countries near their original homelands.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives won February’s national election on a promise to bring down immigration levels, which opinion polls showed many voters regarded as being out of control, although numbers have been falling for over a year.
In an interview with the Welt am Sonntag newspaper published on Saturday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the approach of using third countries could work only if there was a Europe-wide consensus.
“We need third countries that are prepared to take migrants who are objectively unable to return to their home countries,” he told the newspaper.
Earlier this month, the EU’s executive Commission proposed a scheme that would let member states reject asylum applications from migrants who passed through a “safe” third country on their way to the bloc. The proposals, criticized by rights groups, have yet to be adopted by national governments or the European Parliament.
“No individual EU member state can create this model on its own: it will have to happen on an EU level,” Dobrindt said. “We are preparing the foundations for that right now.”
Dobrindt’s initial promises to tighten border controls on taking office angered neighbors who protested at plans to return to their territory those migrants found not to have a right to enter Germany.
An Italian plan to process asylum seekers picked up at sea in Albania has stalled amid Italian court challenges.
A scheme by Britain, which is not an EU member, under its previous Conservative government to send asylum seekers who arrived in Britain without permission to Rwanda was scrapped by Prime Minister Keir Starmer when he took office last year.
Germany hopes for EU deal on sending failed asylum seekers to third countries, minister says
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Germany hopes for EU deal on sending failed asylum seekers to third countries, minister says
- The EU’s executive Commission proposed a scheme that would let member states reject asylum applications from migrants who passed through a “safe” third country on their way to the bloc
US lawmaker Fine criticized by rights advocates, Democrats after anti-Muslim remarks
- Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others
WASHINGTON: Rights advocates and multiple Democrats on Tuesday condemned anti-Muslim comments by Republican US Representative Randy Fine who said on Sunday that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Fine, whose comments against Muslims have often sparked outrage, has dismissed the criticism and since doubled down on his remarks on social media. The Council on American-Islamic Relations designated the Republican US lawmaker from Florida as an anti-Muslim extremist last year.
“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” Fine said on X on Sunday in a post that had over 40 million views as of Tuesday afternoon.
Some high-profile Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom called for him to resign while House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Fine an “Islamophobic, disgusting and unrepentant bigot.”
Jeffries also called for Republicans — who hold a majority in both chambers of Congress — to hold Fine accountable.
“To ignore this is to accept and normalize it,” Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others. Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia in the US in recent years due to a range of factors including hard-line immigration policies and white-supremacist rhetoric, as well as the fallout of Israel’s war in Gaza on American society.
