German migration experts have criticised Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt’s decision to extend border controls until September and to continue refusing migrants.
“Because of the new EU asylum law, the legal ground for refusals will become very thin from this summer onward” said migration researcher Daniel Thym of the University of Konstanz. “There is hardly any justification left that Germany needs to refuse asylum seekers because the Dublin rules don’t work”.
Starting in June a new Common European Asylum System (GEAS) will take effect. It aims to curb migration into Europe and to curb uncontrolled intra‑EU movements.
Professor of social law Constantin Hruschka, Evangelical University Freiburg, also criticised the policy. “I have considered the last extension in May and even the introduction by the coalition government to be unlawful. That view has not changed”.
Hruschka does not see a crisis in the asylum figures: “Germany risks jeopardising the very fragile and contested common path in European migration policy by acting unilaterally, and the controls also burden the economy, which already suffers from restrictions on border traffic”.
