Germany’s opposition leader has demanded “comprehensive” rejections of illegal migrants at the country’s borders.
Friedrich Merz, the head of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union party, will meet the government on Tuesday for discussions on drastically toughening immigration policies, building on a similar summit last week.
The meetings have been called as Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor, scrambles to appear tougher on migration in response to the Solingen knife attack last month, in which a Syrian asylum seeker murdered three people at a music festival.
Mr Merz is heaping pressure on Mr Scholz’s coalition to announce stricter border control and migration laws. Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, he called for the “rejection of people at the German external borders on a comprehensive scale” if they do not have the correct paperwork.
His comments were echoed by the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, which demanded new border rules that would “fundamentally be about rejection at the border.”