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CDU leader Friedrich Merz: "We will only agree if there is a reasonably certain guarantee that the numbers will have gone down significantly next year."
Photo: Christoph Reichwein / dpa
The CDU makes cooperation with the federal government on migration policy conditional on the adoption of concrete laws in the Bundestag to control and limit it. In the Bundestag, the actual decisions on such a Germany pact would take place, said CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Saturday at a state party congress of the North Rhine-Westphalian CDU in Hürth. "And we will only agree if there is a reasonably certain guarantee that the numbers will have gone down significantly next year."
Merz added: "In any case, I have no intention of taking joint responsibility for this problem and then going into next year's European elections with this problem."
In a recent interview with SPIEGEL, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced tougher action against rejected asylum seekers and the limitation of irregular migration in Germany. Last Wednesday, he and his ministers in the cabinet launched a so-called Repatriation Improvement Act. This is intended to reduce the number of short-term failed deportations. The plans still have to be approved by the Bundestag.
In the matter itself, nothing has happened since the announcement of the Germany Pact, Merz criticized. He also called on the Greens to correct their immigration policy. Merz called the recent decision of the Federal Cabinet on deportations inadequate. North Rhine-Westphalia's Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) accused the traffic light at the state party congress in Hürth of governing "consistently bypassing the concerns of the people in Germany".
FDP calls for cuts in benefits for asylum seekers
On 6 November, the federal and state governments could agree on further measures on migration policy with Scholz at a conference of state premiers. Among other things, the question of whether cash payments for asylum seekers should be replaced by a payment card and benefits in kind is being discussed.
In a guest article for the »Welt am Sonntag«, the FDP federal ministers Christian Lindner (Finance) and Marco Buschmann (Justice) speak out in favor of it. They are also calling for cuts in benefits. "Under particularly narrow conditions, it would even be conceivable to reduce benefits to virtually 'zero'," they write. They suggest this, for example, in the case of people "who are entitled to humanitarian protection in the EU state responsible for them under the Dublin rules, but who refuse to make use of protection there. In these cases, it would be conceivable to reduce the benefit to reimbursement of the necessary travel expenses to the competent state."
mas/dpa