Germany’s leading opposition party, the centre-right CDU, would be willing to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to be able to pursue tougher asylum policies.
In an interview with The Times, Jens Spahn, a former minister and a prominent member of the CDU, said his party wants to bring down the levels of illegal immigration to Germany once it enters government, but the problem is that over decades, European courts have defined the right to asylum in a broad way that goes far beyond the principles set out in the original ECHR.
The original idea was to provide protection. That is, if you’re providing protection, you decide to whom. But through the court rulings that has evolved into the right for those seeking protection to obtain it in any old way.
Germany has had to deal with an influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants since the start of the European migration crisis a decade ago. The CDU was largely to blame for this, as its then-leader, previous chancellor Angela Merkel, pursued a pro-migration policy, opening up Germany’s borders to migrants fleeing war-torn Syria.
In 2016, at the height of the crisis, 745,000 migrants applied for asylum in Germany. That number has since subsided but has started to grow again in recent years, with 244,000 applications in 2022 and 352,000 in 2023.
A spate of gruesome knife attacks committed by migrants in recent months, the threat of Islamic terrorism, as well as the recent electoral successes of the right-wing anti-immigration AfD party have spurred the current left-liberal government into announcing tougher asylum measures.
However, the CDU, which polls suggest will win the snap elections in February, believes these steps do not go far enough, and the party wants to see illegal immigrants who are not eligible for asylum turned back at Germany’s border. “We are learning everything from our mistakes,” Spahn said of the Merkel era.
For effective measures to be put in place, Jens Spahn believes that a coordinated European effort to change European laws on asylum would be needed, otherwise a CDU government would “think again” about Germany’s membership in the ECHR.
The European Convention on Human Rights entered into force more than seventy years ago, and all members of the Council of Europe (46 European countries) are signatories. Any person who feels their rights have been violated under the convention can take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The court has been accused countless times of advocating liberal-left values and infringing upon the rights of sovereign states, who have no choice but to accept the court’s rulings.
One such recent ruling caused outrage in Germany. The country was condemned and forced to pay compensation to a migrant who had first arrived in Greece before travelling on to Germany, where he was arrested and sent back to Greece. The court inexplicably ruled that Germany had failed to ensure that the man would receive a suitable asylum procedure on arrival in Greece.
The most heated debate on leaving the ECHR has been going on in the United Kingdom, where European court rulings on issues such as the deportation of migrants, climate policies, or whether prisoners can vote at elections have interfered with domestic politics. Many conservative politicians have called for the UK to leave the EHCR, and Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party believes there should be a referendum on the matter.
There has been outrage about ECHR rulings in other countries, too. The court recently condemned both Poland and Romania for the lack of legal recognition for same-sex partnerships, which, they claim, violates the human rights of such couples.
