Taking in refugees to defuse a humanitarian crisis? That is out of the question for the Union. Because now the CDU and CSU are in the opposition, there is no “cuddle course”. The traffic light parties meanwhile agree on a defense against criticism of the Union.
The Bundestag has not even started this part of its debate when the breaking news arrives: Belarus threatens the European Union in the event of new sanctions. “We are warming Europe and they threaten us,” says Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. “What if we cut off gas supplies?”
That could possibly be manageable, because the pipeline Lukashenko is talking about is not the only one between Russia and Europe. And Lukashenko cannot make this interruption without Russian consent, because the management belongs to the Russian state-owned company Gazprom.
But that’s exactly the problem behind the problem: Russia. Union faction deputy Johann Wadephul says that Russian President Vladimir Putin can stop the current situation immediately.
The current situation is the migrants who come to Belarus to reach countries like Germany. These are the people who are now stuck on the Belarusian border because Poland won’t let them in. Those who have “partially fed on leaves” over the past few weeks, as the new Green Bundestag member Julian Pahlke says, who has just returned from the Polish-Belarusian border area.
It is the first foreign policy crisis for the new government that does not even exist yet. It illustrates what has long been clear: that migration policy is a political field in which there are no simple solutions. And that the FDP and the Greens are far apart on some points. It is also clear that the Union was able to switch from government to opposition surprisingly quickly.
No cuddling course
Wadephul says very explicitly that the Union faction accepts its role as a likely opposition faction. And he announced a tough pace: “If we are to oppose, and we will do that, then we will appear here accordingly, and then we will have to hold appropriate discussions with one another.” A “cuddling course, dear left-wing yellow coalition that is on its way here”, will not exist with the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. The Union does not want to take a course close to the AfD either. Their speaker accuses Wadephul of “political well poisoning” because he called the migrants “attackers”.
While Lukashenko threatens and the Bundestag is debating, the Belarusian opposition politician Svetlana Tichanowskaja is sitting in the guest gallery in the Reichstag, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas welcomes her to the applause of the plenum. The unity that appears here for a moment, however, relates to the attitude towards the Belarusian regime.
There is still some agreement that Poland now deserves European solidarity. That is also what Franziska Brantner, MP for the Greens, said. “We will Poland, we will not leave our Baltic partners alone in these difficult times,” she says. And added that European solidarity means “help for Poland, humanitarian aid, help with controls, registration, care and reception”. These are all things that Poles do not does not want – controls, because the migrants should not be allowed into the country in the first place; Not humanitarian aid, because Poland has closed a three-kilometer-wide strip on the border to aid organizations. Even journalists are not allowed in there.
“Especially excited about the FDP”
She hopes, says Brantner, that the Polish government will accept the European offers of support after all. She calls on the executive government to urge Poland “that doctors, aid organizations and journalists finally have access to the border area again”.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas from the SPD, who speaks to Brantner, also belongs to the executive government. Poland deserves European solidarity, he too says. “The problem is not Poland, the problem is Lukashenko.” In view of the approaching winter, caring for the people is a priority. Without mentioning that Poland has closed the border area, Maas demands that it “must be made possible” for such aid to take place.
In addition, the EU will step up “against illegal smuggling through Belarus”. “Nobody should be able to participate in this smuggling ring with impunity”, this message goes “to the transit states, the countries of origin and the airlines”. That is already working: Iraq and Jordan have now stopped flights to Belarus. The sanctions against Lukashenko are also to be expanded and tightened. And finally, awareness-raising work in the countries of origin is to be improved in order to prevent people from getting on the plane to Minsk. Something like that also worked in the countries of the Western Balkans.
The North Rhine-Westphalian Minister for Refugees and Integration, Joachim Stamp, speaks for the FDP. The tone for his speech was set at the beginning of the debate, Union parliamentary group vice-president Thorsten Frei. He was “especially excited about the FDP, which basically says the opposite of what the Greens want”. Frei also says that it would be “completely wrong” to take in the refugees from the border area and distribute them in Europe. “This will increase the pressure on the Polish border, and it will drive a rift into the European Union, that is the stupidest thing that can be asked at this point.” At this point, there are heckling from the AfD, reminding that Chancellor Angela Merkel did not act according to this principle in 2015 – only that the hecklers phrased it a little differently.
“You have to accept the help”
Stamp doesn’t show that an attempt was being made to force a mushroom into the traffic light. He expressly endorses both Maas and Brantner, with a view to the Greens only about the statement that “no people are allowed to die in our area of responsibility”, as Stamp says. Poland needs support in securing the European external border. And he adds: “You have to accept the help too.” Otherwise, he praised the migration and integration policy of the North Rhine-Westphalian state government and the corresponding passages in the exploratory paper of the traffic light parties.
Left MP Gökay Akbulut has declared no solidarity with the Polish government. She says at least ten people died who should not have died if Poland had applied the law on its border. “The rejection of refugees without an individual examination of their asylum procedure is a clear violation of the Geneva Refugee Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights and the current EU asylum law.”
The AfD is completely outside of the unity in the Bundestag in this debate. It is not Lukashenko that needs to be stopped, says her speaker Gottfried Curio, but “the criminal attackers”. These are “not poor migrants who do not know what is happening to them”, but “perpetrators” who brought about their situation themselves, “in order to blackmail themselves into all-round care in Germany”. Lukashenko is acting “exactly in accordance with the global migration pact,” says Curio. What he is doing is “just relocation at all costs”.