German Green politician Annalena Baerbock contended that her party remains unified in its asylum policy stance in an interview on Thursday, despite signs of a split over the top Green candidate’s calls for a crackdown on migrants.
Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor and the Greens’ leading candidate for the upcoming February 23 election, unveiled a 10-point plan that calls for more deportations and particularly tough enforcement on suspected Islamists and other extremists.
Germany’s Greens have historically championed the rights of refugees.
“The Habeck plan is the result and the short summary of our election programme and we stand by it as a party,” Baerbock, Germany’s current foreign minister, told a local radio station in Berlin on Thursday.
The youth wing of the party, the Green Youth, responded to Habeck’s plan with their own paper which called for far greater support for migrants and better services for those fleeing persecution.
Baerbock acknowledged that there “are always individual voices” of dissent, but noted that the Green Party’s election manifesto, which contains sections on migration and domestic security issues, was unanimously adopted at the party conference.
“A liberal society must have the strength to be able to say in one breath that those who abuse our right of asylum – such as Islamists and criminals – must be deported and at the same time the thousands of people who work here and have found a home here, who have fled from Islamists, must of course continue to receive protection in our country,” Baerbock said.