Luise Amtsberg, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Green Party’s rapporteur on Syria and the Middle East, sharply dismissed Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s claim that the majority of Syrian refugees in Germany will return home within the next three years.
Amtsberg told the newspapers of the Funke Media Group on Tuesday that Merz’s assertion that “about 80 percent” of Syrians living in Germany should go back is not only unrealistic but cynical. She argued that those figures ignore the fragile security situation in Syria and the fact that many Syrian refugees have already become an integral part of German society.
She had visited Syria herself in February and described the area as “desolate”. Near Damascus, she says, it is clear how the Assad regime has systematically destroyed entire cities. Re‑building there does not simply mean putting up new houses; it means starting from scratch and making life possible once again. Anyone who has seen those places cannot honestly claim that there are widespread safe conditions for return or that it is merely a matter of personal choice.
Amtsberg expects decisive words aimed at Syria’s transitional president. She insists that the military violence in the northeast must cease immediately, that a peaceful future requires a national dialogue that involves all groups, the admission of parties, the reckoning of past crimes, and the strengthening of civil society. For anyone who wishes to help shape a peaceful future in Syria, she says, the debate in Germany cannot be reduced to expulsions; it must put the plight of affected people at its centre.
