German Chancellor Angela Merkel may need to brace for a constitutional challenge, as the southern German state of Bavaria, threatened to file a complaint at Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court on Friday in Munich after a meeting of the cabinet.
“If the federal government does not soon take effective measures in order to limit the further influx of asylum seekers and thereby impair national legal capacity of states, Bavaria reserves the right to use legal procedures at Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court,” Bavarian State Government announced in a press release.
The Bavarian government demanded to reject refugees directly at the German border, if the other EU states failed to meet their European commitments and to take over the incoming refugees.
Furthermore, Horst Seehofer, Prime Minister of Bavaria, announced Bavarian Integration Act, which has anchored the framework and objectives of the Bavarian integration policy.
Seehofer stressed that this involves “a cannon” of the principles and common values of coexistence.
Same day in Berlin, Germany’s anti-euro party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) also railed against the refugee policy of the German government and announced to make a criminal complaint against the chancellor in the context of asylum policy.
Concerning the decision of the German government at the beginning of September allowing thousands of refugees who were stranded in Hungary to travel to Germany, deputy party leader Alexander Gauland said in Berlin: “Mrs. Merkel has acted as a smuggler.”
Meanwhile, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for a limitation of immigration in Germany.
“We can not permanently take in and integrate more than 1 million refugees each year,” as they wrote in a joint contribution to German news magazine Spiegel on Friday.
In spite of the “unprecedented helpfulness” of the Germans, “we must do everything possible to ensure that the immigration figures to Germany fall again.”
Thus, Gabriel and Steinmeier set a numerical limit on the number of refugees for the first time, in contrast to Merkel, who has always declared that “the fundamental right of asylum for politically persecuted knows no limit.”
With refugee numbers rising, the German government comes under increasing pressure. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was probably never criticized for her decidedly positive attitude in the immigration debate to such an extent as currently, according to German media.
After more than 200,000 asylum seekers came to Germany in a month in September, the refugee influx is causing the Germans now anxiety. Several public opinion polls showed recently that Merkel has lost popularity.