Calls for Germany to copy Britain’s failed scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda have met with uproar as parliamentarians warn it would be a costly, ineffective and illegal gimmick.
The deportation scheme was abandoned by the new Labour government after it won the election in July. However, it has been championed by Germany’s right-wing parties, who say urgent action is needed following a series of deadly attacks by Islamists, including the fatal stabbing of three people at a festival last month, which have galvanised the far right.
Germany’s migration commissioner, Joachim Stamp, from the centre-right Free Democratic Party (FDP) party, part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition, says the now-abandoned facilities prepared for the UK could be put to new use.
Jens Spahn, a leading member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)-Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) opposition, recently toured the Hope Hostel in the capital, Kigali, which had been earmarked for the UK scheme, to show his approval of the accommodation.
However, the measure is fiercely opposed by the Green party, which is in an uneasy federal government coalition with the centre-left (Social Democratic Party) SPD and the FDP.
“Germany has to comply with European asylum law, which means it’s not possible to send people to a third country that they have no connection with,” Erik Marquardt, an MEP with the German Green party told i, adding that it would mean relying on the goodwill of Rwanda’s autocratic president, Paul Kagame.
“Even if we went ahead with it, it would mean the whole asylum system in Germany – and other European Union countries – would be dependent on one dictator in Rwanda. Basically, the EU would be in the hands of Mr Kagame.”
However, Germany’s government is under increasing pressure to crack down further on immigration, amid surging support for the far right. Last month, just days before state elections in the east, a 26-year-old Syrian asylum seeker facing deportation went on a stabbing spree in the western city of Solingen, killing three people. He had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
The SPD, FDP and Greens, the “traffic light” coalition parties, suffered disastrous results in last weekend’s state elections in Saxony and Thuringia when the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won more than twice as many votes as all three of them. Post-election polls indicate that asylum and migration were the key issues in people’s voting decisions.
Following the attack, the government said it would cut benefits to refugees facing deportation and give police more powers to address suspected Islamist threats.
Mr Marquardt said the attack had polarised the debate. “The problem is not migration. It’s Islamism,” he said. “Our approach is to try to find solutions. And the idea that there is one easy solution through just one measure, like sending people to Rwanda, is simply wrong. It is basically populism, and it was the same in the UK; the British government decided to put this populism into laws, and it was a big waste of money.”
He also urged authorities to do more to improve integration of migrants in general. “Irregular migration is a challenge. But people from Syria and Afghanistan are not bad people in general: they want to work, and the challenge is how to bring them into jobs and how to make them part of the society,” he said.
Julian Pahlke, a Green member of the federal parliament, or Bundestag, agreed that the measure would break the law. “The Interior Ministry has carefully assessed the question of externalising asylum procedures to third countries and the findings have been very clear,” he told i. “Twenty-eight experts were interviewed and the result was perfectly clear: Sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would be illegal under European law and most likely not in line with international law and national law.
“Also, the UK’s now-abandoned deportation scheme has demonstrated that such plans are very expensive and not workable. In this debate, it appears that some listen to experts while others turn to populism.”
Germany has taken in the lion’s share of the EU’s migrants in recent years. As of the end of 2023, around 3.2 million people living in Germany arrived in the country as refugees, including more than one million Ukrainians, followed by Syrians and Afghans.
But while at least 18 other EU nations are considering offshoring migrants while their asylum claims are assessed, schemes like the Rwanda plan are rarely effective in their primary aim as a deterrent, according to Hanne Beirens, the Director of the Brussels-based Migration Policy Institute Europe.
“You can see this popping up every time when the pressure is so high on politicians to show that they’re effective on migration,” she said. “Those who work in migration for many years know there’s no quick and easy or dirty solution to these kinds of problems. If you look at the figures in terms of the number of people that have been climbing into boats and making the journey to the UK, knowing that they could be deported to Rwanda, it just shows that these things are not effective.”
Dr Beirens said there was no substitute for engaging with third countries on how to deal with arrivals, returns and asylum. “It’s not one piece of the puzzle that will be sufficient – and not one shiny idea like processing people in Rwanda – that will resolve the problems in Germany,” she said.
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