Frei and Lindholz Sound the Alarm: “We Demand More

On Tuesday, parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei and parliamentary group deputy Andrea Lindholz for the CDU / CSU will discuss measures in migration policy with the traffic lights. But they only agree to meet under one condition.

On Thursday after the brutal terrorist attack in Solingen, the traffic lights finally introduced a package of measures. Without the enormous pressure from opposition leader Friedrich Merz, this probably would not have happened. Anyone who looks carefully, however, must realize that the results of the “package” are modest – given the scale of the challenge. That’s still not enough.

The agreement between the ministers Marco Buschmann (FDP), Robert Habeck (Greens) and Nancy Faeser (SPD) is unclear in many places and contains measures that should either already apply or were announced months ago and which have not yet been implemented. For example, the traffic lights announce cuts to benefits for irregular migrants. According to new European law, they are binding anyway and affect far fewer cases than expected.

Overall, it remains uncertain whether the package of traffic light measures will actually become law. Because it is also true that we have often seen over the last three years that agreements made at traffic lights did not last long. That could happen again in this case too. Because there doesn’t seem to be any agreement in the coalition regarding this. Green Party leader Britta Haßelmann made critical comments immediately after the measures were announced.

So how serious is the traffic light really? Has the urge to change something perhaps disappeared again after the two national elections?

From our point of view, the decisive factor for the assessment is that the paper that the coalition presented last Thursday will neither lead to a fundamental change in migration policy nor will it make Germany significantly safer.

The last ten years should have taught us one thing: we will never solve the ongoing serious migration crisis through deportations alone. We have to start all over from the beginning. And that is the moment of entry into Germany. We need to be rejected at Germany’s outer borders. This is legally possible in the event of an exceptional emergency and the ongoing flagrant breach of law that we see in the Dublin system. This is exactly where the Union wants to start in order to limit illegal immigration.

Anyone who does not recognize a crisis considering the admission of 1.7 million migrants and refugees in just two years, a growing threat from Islamic terrorism and increasing crime does not want to see the seriousness of the situation.

Finally, we must act in a way that is appropriate to the crisis. But are the Greens and the FDP ready to go along with this? In terms of internal security, it is essential that we remove the biggest obstacle to investigations in Germany by storing IP addresses on the Internet. Digital traces left by a criminal can only be assigned to him through this repository. This also includes serious crimes such as child abuse, arms and drug trafficking. If we can’t be more consistent in our Internet searches, Germany will continue to be a land of milk and honey for serious criminals.

The conversation to be held next Tuesday between Ampel and the CDU/CSU parliamentary group will only make sense if the coalition is ready to initiate a fundamental change of direction on migration and security. Our group is not available for hours-long “working groups” or “hearings” on measures that the coalition has previously agreed to on its own. It’s time to act! Citizens expect us to fundamentally change things now.