Stricter measures to deal with a large number of migrants arriving in Germany have been agreed by the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and state leaders, as NGOs criticised Italy’s plans to create centres in Albania to accommodate asylum seekers.
After a marathon session of talks in Berlin that continued into the early hours of Tuesday, Scholz said the measures would help speed up asylum procedures, restrict social benefits for migrants, and provide more federal funding for local communities.
A bleary-eyed Scholz said the decisions amounted to a “historic moment” for the country, even as members of the Greens, part of the coalition government, said that cutting social benefits equated to letting asylum seekers live in poverty.
“This will simply increase social tensions and make integration even more difficult,” Julian Pahlke, the Green party’s migration expert, told Die Zeit.
Migration has once again become an explosive political challenge for Germany’s leaders, with the government feeling pressure from within its own ranks and from the opposition to curb the numbers of people arriving, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey.
Between January and September this year asylum applications rose by about 73% compared with the same period last year, to more than 250,000, according to official statistics.
This is separate to the more than 1 million Ukrainians who have arrived since the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022, who are not required to apply for asylum.
Entering the fraught debate, Scholz called the change a “transition to a breathing system” and said the new measures would mean that “with rising numbers, there is more money, with falling numbers there is less”.
On Monday a separate migration deal was unveiled by the Italian prime minister, which would involve the building of reception centres in Albania for thousands of people arriving by sea.
Speaking to Il Messaggero newspaper on Tuesday, Giorgia Meloni said the plans could serve as a “model of cooperation between EU and non-EU countries”.
But the International Rescue Committee called Rome’s agreement with Tirana a “further blow” for EU solidarity. Its senior director for Europe advocacy described it as “dehumanising” and said that “everyone has the fundamental right to apply for asylum – regardless of where they are from, or how they arrive.
“The latest decision by Italy is part of a concerning trend that undermines this right – focusing on preventing people from reaching Europe, rather than welcoming them with dignity and respect.”
Médecins Sans Frontières said the deal went “one step beyond” previous agreements struck between EU countries and Turkey, Libya and Tunisia. “The aim is no longer to only discourage departures, but to actively prevent people from fleeing and those rescued at sea from gaining safe and rapid access to European territory, thus bypassing the protection and rescue obligations enshrined in international law and European conventions,” it said in a statement.
“The denial of access to Italian territory, the extraterritorial management of asylum applications, the application of accelerated border procedures, and the detention of people in a third country represent a new attack on the right to asylum. These initiatives replicate policies of containment and deterrence that have proven to be ineffective in the long term, but capable of increasing the suffering of thousands of people.”
Giorgia Linardi, a spokesperson for the rescue NGO Sea-Watch, said the deal represented “a new frontal attack by the Italian government to international and EU asylum law, exploiting the desire of international recognition and the fragility of third countries to evade its responsibilities on asylum”.
The plans have caused consternation among senior figures in the EU. Insiders said the European Commission had been given just “one hour’s notice” of the deal, which could process up to 36,000 people in Albania.
One official described it as a “nasty” move by Meloni, coming on the eve of the final negotiations of migration laws designed to deliver solutions for Italy, Greece and other frontier countries that have faced big rises in irregular migration.
Meloni’s deal would initially result in migration centres hosting about 3,000 people but ultimately processing up to 36,000 a year. She has said the plan is necessary in order to reduce migrant arrivals by sea in Italy, which have increased by about 65% compared with the same period a year ago.
Her plan has been compared to controversial efforts by the British government to dispatch thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda, which have been hampered by legal obstacles.
A EuropeanCommission spokesperson said it was seeking details from Italy but warned it would have to ensure any “arrangement is in full respect of EU and international law”.
In Berlin, Scholz said his government was still considering whether asylum procedures outside of the EU would be possible, but was not yet ready to decide on what has long been a highly contentious issue.
Pahlke said discussions over whether to allow asylum procedures to take place outside the EU were “legally and practically effectively impossible, and therefore a pseudo solution”.
