Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the German politics myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
A Berlin court ruled on Monday that Germany had broken the law by turning away asylum seekers at the border without proper assessment, striking down a key measure in chancellor Friedrich Merz’s efforts to cut immigration.
Merz, who was elected in February, announced the policy during the campaign, after an Afghan asylum seeker fatally stabbed a two-year-old and an adult in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg.
The conservative leader made the pledges — which were enacted on the first day of his chancellorship by interior minister Alexander Dobrindt — amid growing support for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came second with more than a fifth of the votes.
However, the Berlin administrative court ruled that three Somali asylum seekers who arrived in Frankfurt an der Oder by train from Poland in May had been “unlawfully” sent back to Poland the same day. The ruling cannot be appealed.
Germany is “obliged” to “carry out in full the procedure determining which member state will be responsible for processing the asylum request”, the court said on Monday, citing EU regulations.
Given the plaintiffs had expressed a desire to apply for asylum when asked by police, this assessment “had to be carried out in Germany”, the court ruled. It added that the German state had failed to demonstrate the three Somalis presented a threat to public order.
However, the asylum seekers did not necessarily have a right to enter German territory without restrictions, the court said.
According to the EU’s Dublin rules, asylum seekers should be processed by the first member state they arrive in. But countries of first entry such as Italy or Greece often do not apply the Dublin rules, letting people travel to be processed in other countries where they may have family or friends. It is then in practice difficult to send them back to the country of first entry.
Merz announced his immigration plan after a series of attacks involving migrants. The Aschaffenburg stabbing came a month after a Saudi Arabian doctor ploughed through a Christmas market, killing six and injuring hundreds. In August, a Syrian national fatally stabbed three people and injured eight others in the western city of Solingen.
The AfD seized on the attacks to justify its calls for its “remigration” plan, or mass deportations of immigrants.
Merz tried and failed during the campaign to pass a motion in parliament on blocking asylum seekers from entering the country, only managing to cause outrage across the political mainstream after the AfD backed the proposal.
