Germany to deport ‘single and healthy' asylum seekers to Greece
Single, healthy male asylum seekers who have travelled to Germany via Greece can be deported back to the Mediterranean state, a top German court has ruled.
In a boost for Friedrich Merz, the incoming German chancellor who wants to reduce migration levels, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig ruled that asylum seekers who meet the criteria can cope with a lack of state support in Greece, because they will not face inhumane treatment in the country.
Robert Keller, one of the judges, said that the ruling was ultimately based on whether refugees in Greece had access to 'bread, bed and soap'.
He said: 'That's not much, we know that.'
Mr Merz's incoming coalition, comprising his Christian Democrats (CDU) and the centre-Left Social Democrats, has vowed to turn away asylum seekers en masse from Germany's borders, claiming public services are 'overwhelmed'.
The ruling means that asylum seekers who entered the European Union via Greece and were granted asylum, but then continued to Germany and lodged a new claim, risk being sent back by German authorities.
Under the Dublin Agreement, asylum seekers are supposed to have their claims processed in the first EU country they enter, but those rules are rarely enforced.
The ruling was a response to an appeal by two refugees, a citizen of Somalia and a Gaza-born man, who were seeking to overturn their deportation orders to Greece.
The two men fled their home countries in 2017 and 2018, crossed through Turkey and were granted refugee status in Greece, the German news agency DPA reported.
They continued on to Germany and lodged new asylum applications that were rejected by German authorities, who then issued deportation orders to Greece.
The men filed appeals against the deportation orders because they feared that they would face severe hardship in Greece, such as a lack of access to basic services and hostility towards asylum seekers.
German courts have generally struggled to deport refugees back to Greece due to resistance from human rights groups and legal appeals, which argue that the living conditions for refugees in Greece are extremely poor.
But the ruling by the Federal Administrative Court found that single, healthy, able-bodied male migrants should be able to cope with the poorer living standards awaiting them in Greece.
'It cannot be expected with any significant probability that able-bodied, healthy and single young male beneficiaries of protection returning to Greece will find themselves in extreme material hardship, preventing them from meeting their most basic needs in terms of accommodation, food, and hygiene,' the ruling states, according to the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
The ruling accepted that waiting times for documents and a general lack of state support in Greece were an issue for asylum seekers, but they 'can likely find accommodation at least in temporary shelters or emergency accommodations with basic sanitary facilities', it said.
It comes after a senior CDU MP told The Telegraph that German capacity for refugees was exhausted, after taking in millions of people from Syria, Afghanistan and most recently Ukraine.
Günter Krings said: 'More than four million asylum seekers and war refugees came to Germany in the last decade; our capacities to integrate so many people into our society are exhausted, our public order and internal security severely affected.'
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