New regulations on safe countries of origin and abolition of legal representation in detention pending deportation

The Bundestag has approved a federal government bill that stipulates that in the future safe countries of origin for international protection, i.e. for asylum under the Geneva Refugee Convention or subsidiary protection, can be determined by legal ordinance. However, the previous rules for safe countries of origin according to Article 16a of the Basic Law remain unaffected. According to the coalition factions, classifying a country as “safe” should significantly speed up asylum procedures. People from these countries generally have no prospect of protection in Germany, which makes their procedures at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees faster and, in the event of a rejection, enables them to be returned more quickly. However, the individual review of each individual application remains. At the same time, this should make Germany less attractive for applicants who apply for protection status for reasons that are not asylum-related. The draft law is intended to implement a requirement of the coalition agreement and create the basis for being able to react more quickly to increasing asylum applications from certain countries in the future. In addition, a regulation is to be repealed that has required legal representation in deportation detention and custody procedures since 2024. The Interior Committee has presented a recommendation for the draft law with some changes. Among other things, the Citizenship Act is to be amended: Anyone who deliberately deceives, bribes, threatens or provides false information during the naturalization process can be excluded from naturalization for ten years. The federal government's bill was approved in an amended version with 457 yes votes. 130 MPs voted no, there were three abstentions from Jan Dieren (SPD), Annika Klose (SPD) and Knuth Meyer-Soltau (AfD).