Germany is planning to increase the number of asylum seekers it detains in airports in the latest attempt to toughen its border policies.
In a draft law, Berlin proposes holding asylum-seekers from countries with acceptance rates below 20 per cent across the EU on airport premises.
Their cases will be heard while they are detained in specially-built facilities.
Berlin already holds some asylum-seekers in airports. Those who tear up their passports on landing, or come from countries Berlin itself deems safe, are put-up on site in five airports.
But changing the rules so that all from countries with below 20 per cent acceptance rates across the EU would significantly widen the detention scheme.
More airport holding pens would likely have to be constructed and the government of Olaf Scholz, the centre-Left chancellor, is seeking advice from the European Commission on the legality of its proposed law.
Mr Scholz has made toughening Germany’s migration policies a key plank of his agenda as he risks losing support to the Right, which has called for far tighter rules.
Fewer than 20 per cent of migrants from Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh, India, Serbia, Tunisia and Georgia are granted asylum status across the bloc.
Some 300, 000 asylum seekers entered Germany illegally last year. Berlin’s officials have told their EU counterparts that airports and ports are the only external borders of the bloc in Germany.
Diplomatic sources told the Telegraph that Berlin was keen to clarify with Brussels how far the new airport procedure could go under the legal framework before new EU rules for accelerated asylum claims come into force in mid-2026.
“We want to get as close as possible to the new rules as possible,” a source said.
Under the airport detention scheme, asylum-seekers stay in the transit area of the airport while their case is examined, which takes two days.
If the claim is rejected, they can apply for temporary legal protection while remaining in the airport. If that application is approved, the person can enter Germany but if it is rejected, they are deported.
Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg and Munich are the only airports in Germany currently equipped to do the airport procedure as they have asylum accommodation on site. It is thought the procedure was last used in January in Frankfurt.
Illegal border crossings into the EU fell by 42 per cent to 166,000 in the first nine months of this year but asylum claims are still high.
The European Union Agency for Asylum said that 513,000 asylum claims were made in the EU, Norway and Switzerland in the first half of this year, which is on course to match 2023’s more than 1.1m applications. That was the highest number since the migrant crisis in 2015-2016.
The data suggest that while illegal sea crossings have been curbed by EU deals with non-EU countries exchanging funding and aid for stronger policing of borders, migrants are arriving in Europe through other routes such as airports before claiming asylum.
Mr Scholz argued for the swift implementation of new EU migration rules that will allow speeded up asylum processes at a European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday night.
They introduce eight-week deadlines for claims to be heard and a two-week deadline on interim legal protection. However, Poland and Hungary oppose the “Migration Pact” because of rules that would relocate refugees from under pressure states across the bloc.
Nancy Faeser, the federal minister of the interior, said: “We are implementing the new Common European Asylum System at full speed. This will finally ensure that the EU’s external borders are comprehensively protected and that arrivals are reliably checked and registered.
“Asylum procedures for people with little prospect of protection will then be carried out at the EU’s external borders.”
Mr Scholz’s efforts to change migration rules have accelerated since a mass-stabbing attack in Solingen, western Germany, on August 23 in which three people were killed.
In September, Germany introduced passport controls at all of its land borders and also seeks to impose a “bed, bread and soap” reform that cuts benefits to an absolute minimum for asylum seekers who are based in Germany but registered their claim in a different EU member state.
The German chancellor is under immense pressure from Friedrich Merz, the leader of the opposition CDU party, who wants much tougher measures that lead to “the rejection of people at the German external borders on a comprehensive scale”.
The hard-Right, anti-migrant AfD party, which won its first ever state election in Saxony in September, is also pushing Germany’s traditional parties to adopt a tougher stance on refugee policies.
The clampdown comes as EU leaders called for action to speed up deportations from the bloc at Thursday’s summit.
The meeting was dominated by discussions over whether the EU could set up offshore “return hubs”, which are camps for failed asylum seekers outside of the EU where they can be held before being deported.
Out of the 484,000 non-EU citizens who were ordered to leave the bloc last year, only about 91,500, less than 20 per cent, were effectively returned, according to the Eurostat agency.