The immigration debate in Germany has heated up significantly after last week's knife attack in Aschaffenburg, where a 28-year-old Afghan man killed a two-year-old Moroccan boy and a 41-year-old German who tried to intervene.
Friedrich Merz from the conservative opposition party CDU promises tougher measures and does not shy away from seeking help from the far-right party AFD if necessary to get new rules through for people who are in Germany without permission.
We don't look to the right, we don't look to the left, we only look straight ahead, says Merz, who remains the clear favorite to take over as German Chancellor after the new election on February 23.
Meeting in Warsaw
A CDU-led government in Germany is expected to join the group of EU countries pushing for a tougher migration policy.
The EU Council of Ministers will be led in 2025 by Poland and then Denmark – two countries that have long been among the most migration-skeptical in the EU.
When the member states' responsible ministers meet in Warsaw on Thursday, discussions are expected to focus on how to get more people who do not have the right to stay to leave, either voluntarily or by force.
A concrete new proposal from the EU Commission on "new common approach to returns" has been expedited and will be presented as early as March 11.
Several countries, including Sweden, also want to see proposals on how to create "hubs" outside the EU where deported persons can be gathered while waiting to be sent home.
"Safe countries"
The EU Commission is also expected to present a new proposal this year on the view of "safe countries", to which EU countries can send back both migrants and asylum seekers if they are not considered to be in danger.
According to the online newspaper EU Observer, both Poland and Denmark see opportunities to remove the rules that require a certain connection between the country and the person being sent back.
As the presiding country, we see that member states would like to make migration rules a bit more effective by removing the connection criterion, said Kamil Kisiel from the Polish Interior Ministry at a meeting in Brussels two weeks ago.
The EU's interior and justice ministers will meet in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday and Friday. On the agenda are, among other things, migration policy, civil and military preparedness, and internal security.
On the migration theme, the ministers have been given three questions to address: how to ensure that more deported persons can be removed from the EU, how to handle the abuse of asylum rules by governments and criminals, and how the EU can best cooperate with countries outside the EU.
