The Lower House of Parliament Germany (Bundestag) approved this Friday a package of security measures – proposed by the Government in response to recent Islamist attacks – by virtue of which they will cut aid to immigrants who are asylum seekers also in other EU countries.
The package of measures is made up of several policies, including this one that restricts aid to asylum seekers forced to leave the country and who have requested entry to another EU country, although this initiative clarifies that exceptions may be made in the event that minors are involved.
The package of measures comes in response to an alleged Islamist attack that occurred at the end of August at a local party in the western German city of Solingen, when a syrian asylum seeker 26-year-old fatally attacked three people with a knife.
Investigations indicate that the perpetrator of the stabbing may have acted out of extremist islamist motives. In addition, it is estimated that the attacker would have evaded the expulsion order from Germany to Bulgaria, which has revived the debate about the treatment that German authorities provide to asylum seekers and migrants.
Along with this measure, the package approved by the Lower House of Bundestag includes a general ban on edged weapons at public events, although an initiative to allow the Police to have access to biometric data on the Internet in certain serious investigations, including terrorism cases, has been left out.
In addition, the green light has been given for the German authorities to deny the asylum application of people who have committed crimes “for reasons anti-semites, racists, xenophobes, “gender, against sexual orientation or other inhuman motives”. The Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, has praised this package of measures.
“We are prohibiting knives at public events and allowing the State enact broader bans“, celebrated Faeser, although he regretted that the expansion of police measures has been blocked, a maneuver that he described as “incomprehensible and irresponsible.”
