Berlin, Jun. 8, (dpa/GNA) - Germany’s Green Party leader Omid Nouripour believes an agreement on asylum reform should not be reached at any cost at the meeting of European Union interior ministers in Luxembourg.
He said it was obvious that the current conditions at the EU’s external borders were not sustainable. “That is why we want a reform, but of course not at any price,” he told German public broadcaster ARD.
At the meeting on Thursday, a new attempt is to be made to initiate a major reform of the European asylum system.
One of the contested reforms under consideration is the introduction of preliminary checks of asylum applicants, within weeks of arrival in the bloc, in reception facilities at the European Union’s borders.
If the applicant has no chance of obtaining asylum, he or she would be sent back immediately. Germany wants to ensure that minors under 18 and families with children are exempted from these procedures.
Nouripour insisted that the reform respect existing laws. This means, for example, that the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1951 Refugee Convention must apply and that the international law of the sea must be respected.
“This means that sea rescue must not be restricted,” he said.
The asylum reform is a controversial topic within Germany’s three-way coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the Green Party and the Free Democrats (FDP).
The Greens in particular have received criticism that the plans are at odds with the party’s traditionally refugee-friendly policies.
In an open letter, some 730 party members lamented the fact that “the German negotiating position does not come close to the contents of the coalition agreement.”
Nouripour does not see a weakening of Europe’s Schengen visa-free travel area even if the asylum reform fails. “I think it’s a bit overheated to say that all border controls within Europe would come back if it fails.”
Timon Dzienus, the co-national spokesman for the youth wing of Germany’s Greens, criticized the European Commission’s plans.
The reform that is on the table “will not solve these problems, but will lead to more chaos, more insecurity and, above all, not to more rule of law,” Dzienus said on Thursday on broadcasters RTL and ntv.
GNA