Monday, May 25, 2026

Christian Wirth, May 6, 2026, Immigration Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/76, pp. 9113-9114. 

Frau President. Valued colleagues. 

A nation consists of a citizenry [Staatsvolk], state borders [Staatsgrenzen] and state power [Staatsgewalt]. This has bestowed on us for decades security, prosperity and a solid sozial system and with which we improvise [damit wir die Notdürftigen auffangen]. This system since 2015 crumbles. It is characteristic that today two delegations, which are rather socialist oriented, put forward respective motions as if to say: All may enter, none need go. 

You have at least acknowledged that, according to German asylum law, anyone can be turned back at the border who comes from a secure third state or an EU state. Yet let us consider the Dublin decree. What is in the Dublin decree? In article 1 of the Dublin decree is that a state is responsible for the examination of the asylum application. That makes sense. 

            Clara Bünger (Linke): The rest of the article you have not read?

Since the 1990s, since the first Dublin treaty, two things were important: For one, asylum shopping shall be abolished, thus no refugees in orbit: Which is to say: No asylum applicant shall be able to seek out a system, a country, in which he receives the highest sozial payments. For another, no situation shall be created where no state considers itself responsible. That is the expression of article 3, paragraph 1, of the Dublin III decree whereby only one state is responsible for the examination and the execution of the asylum application. 

Who is responsible? That is in article 13 of the Dublin III decree. Responsible primarily is the state in which the member of the third state for the first time enters the EU. There are exceptions which are to be examined; for example, in regards family members in another state. 

How do we examine this? In article 20, paragraph 4, of the Dublin III decree is expressly provided that, for this, there can be at most two states: The state into which the third state member enters the EU, and, when he arrives in a further state, the state which then has to examine which state is responsible. That is in the rule of the first state, i.e., for Germany, when family members are there. 

Now comes the decisive sentence. In article 3, paragraph 2, is provided that every EU state is justified to then turn back at the border when it is clear that the processing of a member of a third state, of a migrant, is to be carried out by another state. That is nothing other than what is provided for in article 18, paragraph 2, of the Dublin III decree. And there provides: When another state is responsible for the execution of the asylum procedure, every EU state can turn back the refugee. That is precisely what German asylum law also says. 

            Clara Bünger (Linke): A proceeding is required! 

            Götz Frömming (AfD): We need do that once!

You demand the observance of EU law. I think, we are agreed: EU law is contract law. We have a contract between EU states and the EU. Everyone needs adhere to contracts – pacta sunt servanda – regulated in the Vienna convention on the law of international contracts. 

Now there is article 3, paragraph 2, of the EU Treaty which also applies to Schengen and to  asylum: There is provided: 

           "The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum and immigration and the prevention and combating of crime."

What did the EU do? It fulfilled none of these treaty requirements. We indeed have, in article 23 of the Basic Law, given over in part our sovereign rights to the EU. Nevertheless, the EU has obligations, and when it cannot fulfill these obligations there is, according to article 23, paragraph 1, of the Basic Law a regualtion – a subsidiarity principle – which says: We need to concern ourselves with our own affairs. That is to say: If we want to have security, order and an asylum system which function, then we ourselves need to regulate that, because, for that, the EU is not in position. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]