Germany denies declaring national emergency over migration

Germany has denied media reports that it had declared a “national emergency” to increase border controls and refuse entry to refugees.

A government spokesperson told Euractiv, denying the report in the Welt newspaper, “The chancellor will not declare a national state of emergency.”

A day after Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, a member of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU), promised a return to pre-2015 migration policy, Germany reportedly informed capitals that it would apply a special provision, Article 72 (Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – TFEU), contained in the EU’s founding treaties. Italy had applied the same article in 2023 to prevent migration.

Merz is expected to attend a meeting in Brussels tomorrow for the start of his chancellorship and Europe Day celebrations. Merz had promised stricter migration rules for Germany.

Professor Daniel Thym from the University of Konstanz said that it would be the first time Germany, a founding member of the EU, would attempt to suspend EU law.

“In most previous cases where a government applied Article 72 TFEU, this attempt failed before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg because its justification remained superficial,” Thym explained.

The European Commission had made such a step possible by issuing a communication on the hybrid threat of migration last December.

Article 72 allows member states to deviate from certain EU regulations to protect public order and safeguard internal security. Whether this would be permissible in this case was a subject of debate between the traffic light coalition and the CDU/CSU last year.