Germany’s grapple with the Europe-wide migration crisis could see the country leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), according to a leading conservative politician.
This comes after Germany tightened its laws to make it easier to prosecute those helping to smuggle migrants to the UK.
Jens Spahn, who served as a minister under Angela Merkel and represents the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said the move is one part of a plan to tackle the migration levels, bringing them down.
On Monday, the UK and Germany set out joint action to “break the business model of people smuggling gangs”.
The deal was signed in London by the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and German Federal Minister of the Interior and Community Nancy Faeser on December 9.
Previously, politicians in the UK have made similar suggestions to Mr Spahn, with conservative leader Kemi Badenoch recently signalling that she would consider leaving the ECHR too.
The CDU has placed a tightening of the country’s migration policy at the top of its agenda ahead of the snap election in February.
The party’s leader Friedrich Merz, likely to become chancellor due to their strong lead in the polls, has said he would declare a national emergency across the country in order to turn back a larger number of asylum seekers.
Conservative politicians in Germany believe that the ECHR have defined the right to asylum too broadly and ambiguously than set out in the original Convention set out after the Second World War.
Speaking to The Times, Spahn said: “We need to go back to the fundamental principle of providing protection.”
“Yes, we want to provide protection but we also want to have control and to be able to decide when, what and why.”
He added: “If you come to the conclusion – and this is the debate that is also happening in the UK at the moment – that these things can’t be changed because there’s no majority for it, then of course you have to think again about your membership [of the ECHR],
“It is not ordained by God that we have to be a member in all these things. We are happy to be a member, we’re convinced multilateralists, but it has to deliver some benefit, too.”