„Westliche Demokratie in Gefahr ohne Asylreform“

The “existence of western democracies” is in peril without fundamental reforms to the European asylum system, one of Germany’s most eminent legal figures has warned.

Hans-Jürgen Papier was previously the most senior judge in the country, which became a European standard bearer for liberal immigration policy. Papier said the current rules had opened the floodgates to “uncontrolled and unconditional immigration” and needed to be radically revised before the public lost faith in conventional politics.

Papier said it was especially important to rein in the rulings from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and national courts — which had gone far beyond the original postwar definition of the right to asylum, and created an “ossified and rigid” body of law that failed to adapt to the present.