Berlin-based correspondent and digital editor for Europe
The conservative opposition leader tipped to lead Germany after next month’s election has promised far-reaching changes to border and asylum rules after a group of children were targeted in a deadly knife attack in Bavaria.
Friedrich Merz has actually promised to close Germany’s borders to all irregular migrants, including those entitled to protection.
A two-year-old boy of Moroccan origin and a 41-year-old man were killed and several others injured in the attack on Wednesday in Aschaffenburg.
The 28-year-old Afghan man was due to appear in court on Thursday charged with murder and grievous bodily harm.
Wednesday’s stabbing in Aschaffenburg is the latest in a series of violent and deadly attacks involving suspects who have sought asylum in Germany.
Within hours, the jabs prompted a harsher tone from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as Merz, the center-right opposition leader.
Scholz promised swift action and called it a “terrorist act” — although officials have so far not said they believe there was a terrorist motive.
Merz, whose Christian Democrats are leading in the polls ahead of federal elections on February 23, refused to accept that the attacks in Mannheim last May, Solingen in August and Magdeburg last month were the “new normal”.
The Afghan suspect in yesterday’s attack arrived in Germany in 2022 and was linked to three previous acts of violence, according to Bavarian officials. He agreed to leave Germany last month, but was still undergoing psychiatric treatment and living in an asylum.
The investigating judge will decide whether he will be remanded in custody or temporarily placed in a psychiatric hospital.
Merz said that on his first day as chancellor he would order the interior ministry to take permanent control of Germany’s borders.
“We see before us the ruins of 10 years of wrong asylum and immigration policy in Germany,” he said. – We have reached the limit.
Under his party colleague Angela Merkel, Germany took in more than a million refugees during Europe’s 2015-16 migrant crisis.
Criticizing EU asylum rules as “recognizably dysfunctional”, he said Germany should now “exercise its right to the primacy of national law”.
Germany has already reintroduced controls at its borders to combat illegal immigration, which is temporarily allowed under the EU’s borderless Schengen rules as a “last resort” measure, but not permanently.
Merz also said it was time to significantly increase the number of places available for pre-deportation detention.
Merz’s promise to close the borders to illegal entry on his first day in office in Berlin has Trumpian undertones.
The American president has pushed through a series of executive orders and actions to tackle illegal immigration since re-entering the White House this week.
In Germany, both the center-left chancellor and Merz are aware that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has consistently been second in the polls, has made immigration a top issue.
AfD leader Alice Weidel has called for a vote in the German parliament next week on closing Germany’s borders and returning illegal migrants. “Knife terror in Aschaffenburg must now have consequences,” she said on social media.
Some critics will argue that the move by Scholz and Merz to take a tougher stance now comes too late. Others will argue that the mainstream parties’ shift to the right may simply strengthen the AfD’s case.
In any case, German politics is not subject to a presidential set of decrees on the first day, given the necessity of forming coalitions with other parties.
The leader of the liberal Free Democratic Party, Christian Lindner, said that Merz would not be able to introduce such changes if he were to form a coalition with the Social Democrats or the Green Party.
Nancy Faeser, who is also the minister of the interior and a party colleague of Olaf Scholz, suggests that “some people are now making arguments in the election campaign that are mostly without facts”.
“I can only warn very clearly against the misuse of such a terrible act for populism, which only benefits right-wing populists with their contempt for humanity,” she said.
A 41-year-old man who was killed in a knife attack on Wednesday has been praised, apparently for coming to the aid of a kindergarten group and saving the lives of other children.
Another two-year-old girl of Syrian origin was stabbed in the neck.
A 72-year-old man suffered serious stab wounds, and a kindergarten teacher suffered a broken arm.
