Scrapping Germany's asylum right: legally possible, hardly workable
Saxony's Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) wants to replace the individual right to asylum with annual quotas. Under his four-point plan, the number of people Germany protects should depend on how many people cities and municipalities can take in. His ministry later said asylum should remain in the constitution as a principle, but only be granted within quotas up to a flexible upper limit.
Experts say changing the constitution is legally possible, but hard to do. It would need a two-thirds majority in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, which is unlikely under the current majorities, according to constitutional law professor Michael Brenner of the University of Jena. The right to asylum in Article 16a was already restricted in the 1990s, so today only about 45,000 of around 3.4 million refugees in Germany have protection under that article.
Even without Article 16a, protection would still apply through EU asylum law, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans deportation to a country where a person faces torture or inhuman treatment. The refugee organisation Pro Asyl said Germany would practically have to leave all these agreements. A quota system would also need to be agreed at EU level.
Schuster's plan also calls for easier deportation of serious offenders by changing the European Convention on Human Rights, detention to force rejected asylum seekers to leave, and stricter naturalisation rules. The SPD, the Greens, the Left and the BSW criticised the proposal, and the federal government's integration commissioner, Natalie Pawlik, called it populist. Hesse's CDU interior minister, Roman Poseck, said such changes were not realistic in the short or medium term.
What it means for you: nothing changes now. This is a proposal from one state minister, not a law. Asylum procedures, existing protection status and the current naturalisation rules are not affected. If you have questions about your own case, ask a migration counselling service or a lawyer.