A new migration crackdown that could see some asylum seekers turned away at German borders is “legally sound”, Germany‘s new chancellor Friedrich Merz has said.
The conservative German leader said such emergency measures would be possible only “for a limited period of time” and his government would support efforts to harden the European Union‘s external borders.
“We don’t want to leave the securing of our external European borders only to those who have those borders,” he said.
Mr Merz was speaking after he met European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, during a stop on a tour of major European capitals that earlier this week saw him visit leaders in Paris and Warsaw.
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During its first week in office the new German government announced plans to rescind a federal order that allowed people without valid documents to enter Germany to claim asylum.
“We believe that they are the right measures and they are legally sound,” Mr Merz said, at a joint press conference with Dr von der Leyen.
The previous coalition government led by Olaf Scholz introduced emergency border checks last year, in response to pressure to do more to reduce migration from Mr Merz’s Christian Democratic Union and the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Dr von der Leyen said proposed border controls had to be time-limited and closely co-ordinated with both the commission and Germany’s EU neighbours.
The chancellor repeated his promise that Germany would take on a bigger role driving the European political agenda. Mr Merz hinted that could mean the fiscally frugal state lifting its traditional opposition to all 27 EU states jointly taking on debt together, to finance significant increases in defence spending.
[ Merz’s first day: Berlin back in business and interested in new ‘push for Europe’Opens in new window ]
The centre-right leader said there were “exceptional circumstances” where Germany had supported common borrowing in the past to fund an EU-wide recovery scheme during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The need to quickly increase Europe’s ability to defend itself was another situation that could warrant common debt, he said, though he added he could not “pre-empt” discussions about the contentious proposal that would take place within his government and with other EU capitals.
He was clear that EU states deciding to take on joint debt had to remain an exception, rather than a rule. “We can’t go into never-ending spirals of debt,” he said.
The commission was working hard to land a trade deal with the US to suspend import tariffs on European trade introduced by US president Donald Trump, Dr von der Leyen said.
The EU executive, which steers the union’s trade policy, this week proposed a further range of retaliatory tariffs on the US aircraft, automobile and agricultural industries, should talks fail.
“We prefer a negotiated solution ... We will not take anything off the table until we have a satisfactory result,” the commission president said.
EU negotiators have made little progress with US counterparts in their efforts to strike a trade agreement that would see Mr Trump drop blanket 10 per cent tariffs on imports from EU states, and 25 per cent duties on steel and cars.
Dr von der Leyen said her preference would be to travel to the White House for a sit down with Mr Trump only if a deal had been agreed. “If I go to the White House I want to have a package that we can discuss and I want to have a solution we can both agree on,” she said.
