Germany deported dozens of Afghan males to their homeland on Friday (July 18, 2025), the second time it has finished so since the Taliban returned to energy and the first since a brand new authorities pledging a harder line on migration took workplace in Berlin.
German authorities stated a flight took off Friday (July 18, 2025) morning carrying 81 Afghans, all of them males who had beforehand come to judicial authorities’ consideration and had had asylum purposes rejected.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated the deportation was carried out with the assist of Qatar and preceded by weeks of negotiations. He additionally stated there have been contacts with Afghanistan, however didn’t elaborate.
More than 10 months in the past, Germany’s earlier authorities deported Afghan nationals to their homeland for the first time since the Taliban returned to energy in 2021. Then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to step up deportations of asylum-seekers.
Merz famous that, whereas diplomatic relations between Germany and Afghanistan haven’t formally been damaged off, Berlin would not acknowledge the Taliban authorities in Kabul.
“The decisive question is how one deals with this regime, and it will remain at technical coordination until further notice,” he stated at a information convention in Berlin.
The Interior Ministry stated the authorities goals to perform extra deportations to Afghanistan, however did not specify when which may occur.
Merz made harder migration coverage a central plank of his marketing campaign for Germany’s election in February.
Just after he took workplace in early May, the authorities stationed extra police at the border — stepping up border checks launched by the Scholz authorities — and stated some asylum-seekers attempting to enter Europe’s greatest financial system could be turned away. It additionally has suspended household reunions for a lot of migrants.
Asylum purposes declined from 329,120 in 2023 to 229,751 final 12 months and have continued to fall this 12 months.
“You can see from the figures that we are obviously on the right path, but we are not yet at the end of that path,” Merz stated.
The Afghan deportation flight took off hours earlier than German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt plans to talk about migration along with his counterparts from 5 neighboring nations — France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic — in addition to the European Union’s commissioner chargeable for migration, Magnus Brunner. Dobrindt is internet hosting the assembly on the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak, on the Austrian border.
