Germany updates: EU ministers talk migration in Denmark – DW – 07/22/2025
EU interior ministers are meeting in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, on Tuesday for talks on how best to combat irregular migration and organized crime.
Among them is be German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who last week already advocated a harsher European migration policy in talks with several counterparts, including on repatriations of rejected asylum-seekers to countries like Syria and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, a cyber espionage operation targeting Microsoft server software has compromised a large number of organizations, including some in Germany.
A German Air Force flight made an emergency landing in Leipzig on Monday night after a warning message went off in the cockpit, a spokesperson said.
Speaking with the German press agency DPA, the Airbus A319 was on its way back from Berlin to its base in Cologne.
Earlier, the plane had been carrying Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, who had been on her first official visit to Poland. She had disembarked in Berlin.
The spokesperson said that the plane would be inspected today, after which a decision will be made if the aircraft needs repairs.
German military equipment has long been the butt of international jokes for being run-down and out of date. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel famously had to break off a journey to a G20 summit when her plane experienced technical issues.
The German media group Südwestdeutsche Medienholding (SWMH), which owns daily among other publications, has been the target of a "critical IT security incident," it said on Tuesday.
The group said its internal network was briefly accessed by unauthorized individuals in mid-July, affecting all the companies connected by it, including the and dailies.
It said the attack had been stopped and that all online reporting and newspaper production had continued without disruption.
The attack has been reported to the police cybercrime unit and the incident is being investigated by external IT security experts, it said.
SWMH is one of Germany's largest newspaper publishers and employs some 4,500 people.
Germany's Constitutional Court has upheld a three-year jail sentence handed to a former doctor convicted of assisting in the suicide of a mentally ill patient.
The man had filed a complaint with the court claiming that his basic rights had been violated by his punishment.
The court said the man had failed to prove sufficiently that this was the case.
The former doctor was sentenced in 2024 by a regional court in Essen for having assisted the patient to commit suicide in 2020, although the latter suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was considered by the court to be incapable of taking a free decision to take his life.
Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Germany under some circumstances, but the patient has to be determined to be mentally sound enough to make the decision.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 videoEuropean countries have massively increased their defense spending amid fears of further Russian territorial aggression.
Several startups in Germany are seeking to exploit the trend but face many challenges.
DW has this video analysis:
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The German Association of General Practitioners (Hausärztinnen- und Hausärzteverband) has warned that a newly introduced system aimed at allowing health care providers to more easily exchange patient data is in danger of "crash landing."
"The number of active users is sobering," association chairman Markus Beier told the daily . "If those in charge keep on as they have been, one of the most important care projects of the past years will fail slowly but surely."
He said this would be bad news for patients, as "a well-implemented electronic patient file indubitably would have the potential to tangibly improve and simplify care."
He called on health insurance companies to conduct a "big and coordinated information campaign" for their customers.
Beier, however, also criticized the system itself as being over-complicated to use, saying that barely a week went by in which doctors' practices didn't have problems accessing patient files.
Electronic patient fileswere rolled out nationwide in April of this year. The files contain the entire medical history of a patient, with aim of facilitating treatment coordination between physicians and other health care providers.
Internet security experts say there have been dozens of hacking attacks on self-hosted servers using Microsoft's SharePoint software, affecting several organizations, including government bodies, mostly in Germany and the US.
The SharePoint servers are widely used by organizations, including government bodies, major industrial firms, banks, auditors and health care companies, for the internal sharing of documents and to facilitate collaboration.
Security researchers warn that the hacking operation, reportedly known as "ToolShell," is a serious one and can allow actors to fully access SharePoint file systems, including services connected to SharePoint, such as Teams and OneDrive.
The hack allows the perpetrators to potentially drop a so-called backdoor to give them continuous access to victim organizations.
Microsoft said it had "provided security updates and encourages customers to install them," a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
It said the vulnerability affects only on-site SharePoint servers used within businesses or organizations and not Microsoft's cloud-based SharePoint Online service.
Eye Security, a Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm that helped uncover the operation, has declined to identify the affected organizations, but said the relevant national authorities had been notified.
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Interior ministers from the 27 EU member states are set to meet in the Danish capital,Copenhagen, for talks focusing on migration and European security.
Discussions are to center on how best to repatriate people who have had their asylum requests refused and how to combat irregular migration.
The fight against organized crime and the drug trade will also be on the agenda.
Proposals on the table include the possibility of setting up so-called repatriation centers outside the EU.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt is expected to be among the attendees.
Dobrindt has already implemented controversial pushback measures at Germany's borders that a court has ruled to be illegal.
Last Friday, the conservative politician from Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) also pushed for much harsher European migration policies in talks with counterparts from Austria, France, Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic during a summit hosted in Germany.
This included proposals to be more rigorous in sending people back to home countries whose security situation is fragile, such as Syria and Afghanistan.
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from the DW Bonn newsroom on the banks of the Rhine!
Riding high after sealing an agreement from a German business alliance to invest €631 billion ($733 billion) in Germany over the next three years, Chancellor Friedrich Merz is turning to foreign diplomacy on Tuesday, hosting Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala in Berlin.
Meanwhile, Merz's interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, is set to attend a meeting in Denmark with his EU counterparts to talk migration.
German Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan is also setting off, headed to South Africa as part of the Just Energy Transition Partnership. He's also planning to take part in the G20 development ministers' summit taking place in Johannesburg.
For the latest developments, explainers and analysis from Germany, keep reading.
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