Migration policy was one of the biggest issues of the German 2025 election. It continues to spark controversy after the ballot. The far-right AfD accused Friedrich Merz, leader of the winning center-right CDU-CSU alliance, of breaking a key election promise even before coalition talks had started.
Claim: The leading candidate of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, accused likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz of “election fraud” on X. The post, which had 1.9 million views as of February 28, said: “Merz is already throwing all election promises overboard on day 1, [he] no longer wants to close the borders.”
Has Merz broken an election promise already? DW Fact check probed the details.
DW Fact check: False.
During the election campaign, Merz triggered heated debates with his plans to change migration policy and his repeated promises to “secure the German border.” However, he did not mention “closing the border.”
Weidel’s claim that Merz was breaking election pledges was posted alongside a video where he spoke of a plan to tighten border controls. Merz concluded his answer by saying: “I also want to make it very clear once again: none of us are talking about border closures. Nobody is. Although that was claimed at times during the election campaign, none of us want to close the borders.”
The video was originally shared by former Bild tabloid head Julian Reichelt. In his post on X, Reichelt suggests Merz was contradicting an earlier statement following a knife attack in Aschaffenburg in January 2025 in which an Afghan deportee killed two people. Following that attack, Merz said: “There will be a de facto ban on entry into Germany for anyone who does not have valid entry documents. This also expressly applies to persons entitled to protection.”
In a live statement on 23 January 2025, Merz had also outlined his plans to take a tough stance on immigration. “On my first day in office, I would instruct the Federal Ministry of the Interior to permanently control Germany’s national borders with all of our neighbors and reject all attempts at illegal entry without exception.”
The so-called “Five Point Plan” of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group (“Five points for secure borders and the end of illegal migration”), the motion for a resolution that was passed in the Bundestag at the end of January with votes from the AfD, also talks about “securing Germany’s borders” and “permanent border controls.” However, the word “border closure” was not mentioned in the document.
Are tight border controls the same as border closures?
Nevertheless, some media have interpreted Merz’s statement as a promise to “close the border”: The Austrian medium Der Standard ran the headline: “CDU leader Merz meets resistance in Germany with plans to close the border.” And the German daily TAZ wrote: “Immediate program of the Union foresees border closure.”
“I understand a ‘border closure’ to mean an almost comprehensive travel ban, as was the case during the coronavirus pandemic,” commented European law expert Daniel Thym from the University of Konstanz when asked by DW. “Friedrich Merz never promised that. It was ‘only’ about the permanent extension of border controls, which have been in place at most German borders for a year now, without these borders being ‘closed.’ Merz also wants to turn back asylum seekers. This is tantamount to a de facto entry ban for this group.”
Germany’s Interior Ministry ordered internal border controlsat all German land borders in mid-September 2024. The controls were brought in as a temporary measure against irregular migration and people smuggling and have since been extended until September 15, 2025.
According to the Interior Ministry, this order is based on the provisions of Art. 25 et seq. of the Schengen Borders Code and is only possible as a last resort under strict conditions. Germany justified the border controls to the EU Commission with “serious threats to public safety and order due to persistently high levels of irregular migration and migrant smuggling as well as the strain on the asylum reception system.”
This makes Germany one of the countries in the Schengen area that currently carry out border controls, along with the Netherlands, France, Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In exceptional circumstances, countries may only extend the reintroduction of internal border controls three times in six months, so that a maximum duration of two years is not exceeded. By updating the Schengen Borders Code, it is also possible to extend controls by a further year in serious exceptional situations. Germany would therefore have to lift internal border controls at its land borders by fall 2027 at the latest.
Can migrants be turned away at borders?
Third-country nationals seeking protection, for example, people seeking asylum from outside the EU, will continue to be forwarded to the responsible reception facility in Germany. They are responsible for examining their asylum status and transferring people to other EU member states. Merz’s approach of rejecting asylum seekers without any checks contravenes the EU’s Dublin III Regulation. Article 3 of this regulation states: “Member States shall examine any application for international protection lodged by a third-country national or a stateless person on the territory of a Member State, including at the border or in transit zones.”
European law expert Daniel Thym says it is still too early to assess whether Friedrich Merz can implement all of his election promises. Only once the new government has been formed will it be clear what concrete steps it intends to take. Thym points out that in their election manifesto, the CDU/CSU wants to make internal border controls superfluous through a functioning EU external border control system.
Effective border protection at the EU’s external borders with uniform standards for registration and responsibilities, as well as a mandatory solidarity mechanism, are part of the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), adopted in May 2024. This means that in the future, people will be checked and registered at the EU’s outer borders. Anyone with little prospect of protection in the EU will have an asylum procedure at the borders within a maximum of seven days, and will have to leave if their application is rejected. These new regulations are due to come into force in June 2026 at the latest.
This article was originally published in German.
