German Court Dismisses AfD Lawsuits against Merkel's Immigration Policy


German Court Dismisses AfD Lawsuits against Merkel's Immigration Policy

TEHRAN (Tasnim) - German Federal Constitutional Court dismissed on Tuesday three lawsuits filed by Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) right-wing party earlier this year against the country's government against Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policy during the 2015 migration crisis.

"In an order published today, the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed as inadmissible… three applications… filed by the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) parliamentary group in the Bundestag. The applications were directed against the refusal of entry of persons in need of protection at the German border in particular in the year 2015," the court said in a press release, published on its official website.

According to the press release, the party failed to provide enough evidence to substantiate their claims that the government's immigration policies had "violated or directly threatened its rights."

Two of the AfD suits claimed that the German government had made some of its decisions without the participation of the Bundestag and thus, violated the principle of the separation of powers, while the third application insists that the country had the right to refuse entry to asylum-seekers in some cases, Sputnik reported.

Over 2 million foreigners entered Germany in 2015, almost doubling the number of migrants compared to the previous year, according to the German Federal Statistical Office. In 2017, AfD, which has adopted a tough anti-migrant stance, entered Bundestag for the first time in the party's history.

In October last year, Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), which now form a government coalition along with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), agreed on a 200,000-per-year limit for refugees. In 2017, the number of arrivals almost halved compared to the year 2015, hitting 1.3 million people.

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