By Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke
BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who seeks to reduce the number of asylum seekers and stem support for the far-right, hopes to move closer towards a national consensus on a tougher migration policy at a meeting on Monday with the heads of Germany’s 16 states.
In recent weeks, Scholz’s government has agreed measures to make it easier to deport migrants and to make the country a less attractive destination in the first place, in stark contrast to Berlin’s perceived open-door policy under former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
It hopes to garner support for such moves from the state leaders and to reach a deal on funding for migration issues that takes account of local authorities’ complaints that public coffers and infrastructure are overburdened.
Given the tight federal budget and high interest rates, the talks are expected to drag late into the evening.
“Too many people are coming,” Scholz said in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published on Oct. 20.
Concern about migration has increased as numbers requesting asylum have risen, boosted by the million Ukrainian refugees that arrived in the country after Russia began its war in February last year.
Some 230,000 people requested asylum in Germany in the first nine months of this year, more than in the full year 2022.
The far-right Alternative for Germany, now in second place in nationwide polls, ahead of all three parties in Scholz’s centre-left coalition, was the first party to tap into concerns about migration.
Last month, Scholz told parliament the country’s democratic forces needed to rally together to tackle issues such as migration to counter the “so-called ‘Alternative’ that is in reality a demolition commando”.
The chancellor has so far held two meetings with the head of the opposition conservatives, Friedrich Merz, to discuss migration amongst other matters.
Scholz’s government does not need support from the opposition to pass laws in the Bundestag lower house of parliament. But he needs the approval of the 16 states in the second chamber, the Bundesrat – and he has to deal with prime ministers from 5 different parties.
A broader consensus on how to tackle migration could also show the government is taking the matter seriously.
Scholz’s centre-left cabinet last month passed a law to make it easier for authorities to deport members of criminal associations and to search migrants’ homes to establish their identity.
Separately, Scholz and his Interior Minister Nancy Faeser have been lobbying African governments to agree migration deals that would foster legal migration and help to plug the country’s labour gap, while better enabling Germany to send back migrants who arrive illegally.
“We need to finally start deporting those who have no right to remain in Germany on a large scale,” Scholz told Der Spiegel.
His government has also agreed changes to existing rules to enable asylum seekers to enter the labour force more rapidly and to punish human traffickers with longer prison sentences.
Separately local authorities are discussing reducing cash handouts to asylum seekers that critics say they send home or use to pay traffickers, and replacing them with material benefits.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh, Editing by Rachel More and Barbara Lewis)
