“Contest of Unworthiness”
Numerous celebrities criticize the traffic light’s asylum policy
6/3/2023 4:02 p.m
Next week the interior ministers of the EU will again discuss a reform of the common asylum rules. Germany also wants to join them – and set up asylum centers outside the EU. More than 100 artists from Germany criticize this sharply.
Dozens of celebrities from German cultural life have in one open letter criticized the change of course of the traffic light coalition in asylum policy. In the coalition agreement, the SPD, Greens and FDP had “made a move in migration policy. That was good and right, because for far too long the impression was given that migration was the problem and isolation was the solution,” the letter says addressed to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Interior Minister Marco Buschmann.
However, the signatories are “very concerned” about the position of the federal government on the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). “Instead of pushing ahead with the promised improvements, you now want to agree to the most massive tightening of EU asylum laws ever,” it says. The migration policy awakening threatens to suffocate in a populist debate. “We are therefore contacting you to ask you to change your position.”
The more than 100 signers of the letter include the musician Herbert Grönemeyer, the bands Kraftklub, Deichkind and Revolverheld, the actors Katja Riemann, Nina Hoss and Benno Fürmann, the authors Sibylle Berg, Marc-Uwe Kling and Jasmina Kuhnke, the cartoonist Ralph Ruthe, the moderators Enissa Amani and Melissa Khalaj and the moderator Klaas Heufer-Umlauf.
EU interior ministers meeting on June 8th
The EU has been working on common asylum rules since 1999. On June 8, the EU interior ministers will meet in Luxembourg to further discuss the controversial CEAS reform. Among other things, it is about the question of whether there should be preliminary checks on asylum applications at the European external borders. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser spoke out in favor of a preliminary examination of asylum applications outside the EU, provided the applicants are adults – from there the asylum seekers should be deported directly to their home countries if they are rejected.
Green politician Baerbock called asylum procedures at the borders “both a curse and an opportunity”. “Border procedures are highly problematic because they interfere with civil liberties.” However, the EU Commission’s proposal is the only realistic chance of achieving an “orderly and humane distribution process” in an EU of 27 very different countries in the foreseeable future. The line is very thin, critical questions are important. “But even inaction would have bitter consequences,” warned the Green politician.
The conservative EPP leader Manfred Weber also spoke out in favor of asylum centers on the EU’s external borders. “We need a quick and legally secure check at the external borders,” said the CSU politician to the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. Leftists and human rights organizations, on the other hand, have criticized the tightening of European asylum law.
For months, many people have been trying to reach southern Italy from North Africa via the dangerous Mediterranean route. According to information from Rome, more than 50,000 migrants have come to the country on boats since January. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 980 people have died on the crossings since the beginning of the year or have been missing since then. In Germany, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees received a good 100,000 initial asylum applications in the first four months of this year, an increase of around 78 percent compared to the previous year.
“Contest of Unworthiness”
The signatories to the open letter, which was initiated by the organization Leave No One Behind, criticize the fact that the federal government is working to “ensure that many people are locked up at the external borders and receive worse standards in fast-track procedures.” In the coalition agreement it was also emphasized that all asylum applications must be examined in terms of content. “But now you are supporting an expansion of safe third countries, which means that even people from Syria or Afghanistan could be increasingly rejected in Europe,” it said.
Instead of “ending the suffering and illegal rejections at the external borders,” as described in the coalition agreement, the signatories “only hear calls for fences and detention camps.” Aid organizations, lawyers’ associations and researchers from the field of migration studies have already “unanimously and numerously expressed criticism of the planned, massive curtailments of asylum rights”. It goes on to say: “And we too can see that migration policy is getting lost in a competition of indignity.” Populism in Germany is gaining the upper hand, solutions in the sense and services of universal humanity are falling by the wayside.
With the open letter, the signatories call on the federal government to “improve asylum law instead of agreeing to further deterioration”. In addition, a meeting between the Federal Government and the signatories and experts is proposed.