The German government will continue to weigh options for outsourcing asylum procedures to countries outside the European Union and present concrete results by December, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday evening.
His comments came after a meeting with the leaders of Germany's 16 federal states at which migration and asylum policy were the dominant topic.
Calls have been mounting in recent months from the municipalities and federal states, who are responsible for housing and care applicants, to increase funding and reduce the number of arrivals in order to relieve the country's overburdened asylum system.
In a migration position paper agreed ahead of the meeting with Scholz, the 16 state leaders jointly called on the German government to "develop concrete models for the implementation of asylum procedures in transit and third countries and, in particular, to address the necessary changes in EU regulation and national asylum law."
Following the meeting, Scholz said that "it has been firmly agreed that we will continue the process and continue to report on these issues."
Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) nevertheless expressed scepticism that outsourcing migration to third countries could reduce irregular immigration to any great extent. "I don't believe that this will be a solution to our structural problems," said Lower Saxony's state premier Stephan Weil.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, also of the SPD, had previously expressed a similar view. Third-country deals could be a "building block", but would not fundamentally change the migration situation in Germany, she said.
Italy, UK models not feasible for Germany, Scholz says
Efforts such as Italy's deal to send some asylum-seeking migrants to Albania were out of the question for Germany in view of its different geographical location, Scholz also said.
The same was true for the United Kingdom's model to fly refugees to Rwanda, he said. Both models concern 3,000 and 6,000 people respectively, Scholz said, adding that Germany was facing an entirely different scale.
The conservative opposition CDU/CSU bloc was nevertheless satisfied with the outcome of Thursday's talks.
"We are not going to stop at expert reports, which I very much welcome," Hesse's state premier Boris Rhein from the CDU said.
Politicians from the CDU/CSU in particular have been pushing for a third-country deal, modelled on Italy's draft agreement with Albania to house and process asylum-seeking migrants.
Although this cannot be transferred one-to-one to Germany, it could serve as a model for the EU to follow, they said, noting a country would have to be found that is willing to co-operate.
Berlin to keep pushing for deportations to Syria, Afghanistan
Another major topic of discussion has been possibly resuming deportations of Afghans and Syrians from Germany who have been convicted of serious criminal offences or are suspected of being radical Islamists.
Germany halted deportations to Afghanistan after the Taliban, a radical Islamist group, seized power over the country in August 2021.
But resuming deportations to Afghanistan and war-torn Syria has been a hot-button issue in Germany, particularly in the wake of the slaying of a policeman by a knife-wielding Afghan migrant during an attack in the German city of Mannheim in May.
Scholz came out in favour of resuming deportations to both countries and he reaffirmed his stance following Thursday's meeting.
His government would press ahead with the deportation of serious criminals and "dangerous individuals" to Afghanistan and Syria, he said.
He noted that Interior Minister Faeser had already started talks on the issue which were "on the right track."
Clarity on deportations to Syria, Afghanistan 'soon'
Faeser on Thursday expressed confidence that the country will soon find ways to deport immigrants convicted of serious crimes or deemed Islamist threats to Afghanistan and Syria.
"We are in concrete negotiations on this and are confident that we will be able to achieve this for this group," Faeser told a separate meeting with the state interior ministers from Germany's 16 federal states just outside Berlin.
There are only a small number of such people, Faeser stressed. She said the German government is examining the extent to which repatriation via neighbouring countries would be possible in the case of Afghan nationals, citing Uzbekistan as a country that had been previously discussed.
However, Faeser did not want to publicly name any countries with which talks are ongoing out of fears of "jeopardizing the concrete negotiations we are currently conducting."
Not everyone is on board
The state premiers of Thuringia and Bremen, from the far-left Die Linke party and the SPD respectively, expressed frustration with Thursday's agreements in a protocol declaration.
They questioned whether outsourcing asylum procedures to third countries fulfils the requirements of the rule of law and humanity.
Michael Stübgen, the interior minister in the eastern state of Brandenburg, also expressed scepticism about third-country schemes. The conservative politician said the UK's costly experience with Rwanda has not been encouraging.
"This is a possible project that will be very complicated, which will also not be easy to arrange legally," said Stübgen. "But I am happy to be convinced that it should be tried."
