December 10, 2024 - 4:30pm
Since the dramatic fall of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship in Syria at the weekend, much of the West has debated the geopolitical implications and wondered whether to rejoice or expect a rejuvenation of jihadist activity in the region. But Germany’s immediate hopes and fears are focused on matters much closer to home.
Just one day after the fall of the Assad regime, a heated debate broke out in Germany on the status of the nearly one million Syrian nationals in the country. Alexander Throm of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), currently in opposition, argued that the situation in Syria had “fundamentally changed” and that this might put the refugee status of Syrians into question. He added that “it should be clear to everyone: asylum is a temporary stay.”
Some of Throm’s colleagues presented remarkably specific plans. Jens Spahn, deputy leader of the conservatives’ parliamentary group, suggested a two-pronged approach: “For anyone who wants to return to Syria we’ll charter flights and provide a starting fund of €1,000”, while the countries who took in the most refugees — Germany, Austria, Turkey and Jordan — would hold a “Reconstruction and Return Conference” on Syria.
The two Left-leaning parties of the ruling minority coalition are vehemently opposed to such discussions. The Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned the debate as “party-political”. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party called it “unprofessional” to speculate on the fate of Syrian refugees while the future of their home country remains uncertain.
However, Faeser’s ministry has now suspended the processing of Syrian asylum applications. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is putting the 47,000 open cases from Syrians “to the bottom of the pile”, as a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior put it yesterday.
This goes beyond just being an administrative matter. Syrian refugees symbolise more than any other group the seismic shift in Germany’s immigration and asylum policy since Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than one million people into the country in 2015 — largely triggered by the Syrian civil war. Since then, Syria has been the single largest country of origin for asylum seekers arriving in Germany, with their number increasing nearly ninefold since 2014.
Germany certainly needs to have a debate around asylum and immigration. In polls, this consistently ranks as the most important issue for voters. The change in Syria has understandably raised hopes among some German politicians that the largest group of asylum seekers may now simply want to go home, making difficult debates around repatriation, detention centres, border closures and deterrence measures a thing of the past.
But in terms of immigration, the debate around the future of Syria is a red herring. For one thing, many Syrians won’t want to go home. They have lived in Germany for years, in a country safer and wealthier than Syria has any hope of being in the foreseeable future. Nor are they the only group of refugees. In total, there are now a record 3.5 million asylum seekers in the country, making up 4% of the population. Raising hopes that the associated political, social and economic tensions will disappear with the Assad regime is dangerous.
Merkel found this out after her assurances in 2016 that “when peace returns to Syria” refugees would “return to their home” did nothing to assuage voters’ concerns. In the next elections, her party slumped to its worst results since 1949, and has not recovered since. The anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland is currently the second-most popular party in the polls; in a representative survey in September, three-quarters of people said they want a “fundamentally different asylum and refugee policy so that fewer people come here”.
Speculation over the future of Syria is no replacement for the immigration debate most Germans want. All the while, Germany’s mainstream parties fail to understand that they are continuing to allow the populist fringes to set the tone.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
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SubscribeAsylum should always be temporary.
The entire discussion around this issue is completely unhinged.
Indeed. Most of the salient points have been well made in today’s article by Henry Hill on Syrians in the UK.
The author of this piece should have read it before providing a less than forthright account of the German situation.
The title is way off the mark. I’m not sure how a debate can be “reignited” if it never stopped. I think a more appropriate description would be “the debate was aggravated”.
“All the while, Germany’s mainstream parties fail to understand that they are continuing to allow the populist fringes to set the tone” – Dear Katja, could you please refrain from insulting people who are a little more concerned than you about the future of the country that is still called Germany?
Parties like AfD will continue to grow in Europe until the mainstream parties get to grips with the migrant/fake asylum problem.
Populist parties of ‘left’ and ‘right’. which have someone shallow labels nowadays. exist now because the established or legacy parties failed to deliver on the back of votes to reject Lisbon Treaty, Financial Crash, widespread self defeating austerity, massive counter productive legal volumes of migration and an ever increasingly failing to deliver economic model.
Exactly, Left and Right are almost meaningless today. I am on the ‘left’ but these days have more in common with Tucker Carlson or Nigle Farage on issues like Ukraine than most of the ‘left’
A modest remark about asylum seekers. I didn’t find a single woman in the illustrative photo. This makes me think sadly.
Permanent asylum is madness.
The populist parties might be “setting the tone”, but what good is that when the political class ignore them?