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  6.  » Germany announces it will turn away asylum seekers at its borders as part of ‘repatriation offensive’ – as anti-migrant AfD party tops opinion polls in the country for the first time ever

German coalition government: (L-R) State Premier of Bavaria Markus Soeder, Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and faction Friedrich Merz, Social Democratic Party (SPD) co-chairman Lars Klingbeil and SPD co-chairwoman Saskia Esken

David Averre – Daily Mail April 12, 2025

Germany’s future government of conservatives and centre-left Social Democrats have agreed a raft of measures to curb illegal migration, including rejecting asylum seekers, enabling deportations to Syria and suspending family reunions.

Asylum seekers will be refused entry along all of Germany‘s borders, the document said, and the policy of ‘turbo-naturalisation’ – allowing certain migrants to gain citizenship after just three years of stay – will be abolished.

The parties want to suspend family reunification for people with a so-called subsidiary protection status for two years and to end all federal admissions programmes for refugees.

The coalition government, which will be led by Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz from the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, will also begin deportations of migrants to Syria and Afghanistan, according to the coalition agreement document.

The agreement said that a deportation programme would start by removing criminals and potentially dangerous persons.

The proposed crackdowns come off the back of a tightly contested election in which migration was a key issue following a rise of the far right and several high-profile attacks by migrants.

As Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc settled on a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) yesterday, Germany’s far-right AfD party topped a major poll for the first time in a sign of growing dissatisfaction with mainstream parties.

Support for the CDU/CSU, which won the February 23 election, fell by five percentage points to 24% while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained three points to land on 25%, according to the Ipsos Institute’s poll.

The AfD came second in the election, the best performance by a far-right party since World War Two.

Its polling strength is a setback for Merz’s conservative alliance, which wanted to win back voters from the party.

The Ipsos poll showed support for outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) unchanged at 15%.

AfD leader Alice Weidel hailed her party’s polling breakthrough in a post on X. ‘The people want political change – and not a ‘business as usual’ coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD,’ she wrote.

For now, though, the AfD have been frozen out by those parties.

Merz and his new government look likely to take office at the beginning of May, with the deal between his conservatives and the SPD capping off weeks of haggling between the two groups.

Besides the tough stance on migration, the coalition aims to revive growth in Europe’s largest economy just as US President Donald Trump looked set to ignite a global trade war.

During a news conference with his coalition partners, Merz directed a message to the White House in English.

‘The key message to Donald Trump is Germany is back on track,’ he said, promising to ramp up defence spending and boost the competitiveness of the economy.

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