Bundestag Tightens Migration Policy with New Safe Country Law

On Friday, the Bundestag passed another coalition law aimed at tightening migration policy. In a recorded vote, 457 lawmakers supported the bill, while 130 voted against it. The legislation allows safe countries of origin to be designated through legal ordinance without requiring the approval of the Bundesrat. However, this will apply only to protection claims under the Geneva Refugee Convention and subsidiary protection, not to asylum applications.

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The government expects the measure to speed up asylum procedures by allowing applications to be rejected as “manifestly unfounded.” The law is also intended to signal to people from the designated countries that their applications for protection in Germany are unlikely to succeed. The draft law also eliminates the provision that people facing deportation detention or custody pending deportation are entitled to legal counsel, a right previously introduced by the ruling coalition.

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Under the Asylum Act, a safe country of origin is defined as a country where, given the general conditions, persecution is generally not to be feared. Asylum or protection applications from people from safe countries are, according to the law, to be rejected as “manifestly unfounded” unless the applicants can prove otherwise.

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“With this Bundestag decision, the policy shift in migration policy continues,” said Alexander Throm (CDU), the interior policy spokesperson for the Union parliamentary group. He announced plans to classify Algeria, India, Morocco, and Tunisia as safe countries of origin.

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The refugee organization Pro Asyl, on the other hand, sees “two very problematic provisions passed.” Wiebke Judith, the organization’s legal policy spokesperson, criticized the ability to designate safe countries of origin via legal ordinance, saying, “With the determination of safe countries of origin by legal ordinance, a legislative process is deliberately bypassed, although it is constitutionally required.”

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“By abolishing the mandatory lawyer in deportation detention, the government is also contributing to a longstanding scandal for our rule of law: the mass illegal deportation detention,” Judith added.

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