A rift has opened at the top of Germany’s government over Syria. After visiting a war-ravaged suburb of Damascus, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul declared that Syrian refugees cannot safely return home.
“Hardly anyone can live here with dignity,” he said.
On Monday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz countered: “The civil war in Syria is over. There is no longer any reason for asylum in Germany, and, therefore, we can begin repatriations” — a pointed remark delivered in Wadephul’s own hometown of Husum on Germany’s North Sea coast.
The Chancellor’s remarks landed like a public reprimand of his party colleague, even as Merz sought to play it down. He pointed out that Wadephul had toured an especially devastated area of Damascus, suggesting that the Foreign Minister’s judgment may have been clouded by emotion.
It took several days for the Foreign Minister to clarify his position: he still backs the deportation of Syrian criminals and supports voluntary returns. But by then, the political fallout had already taken hold.
In a parliamentary group meeting, Wadephul reportedly remarked that Syria looked worse than postwar Germany. According to attendees, the comment further isolated him within the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
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The AfD factor
By that point, Wadephul was already facing mounting criticism from within the conservative ranks. Among the first to speak out was Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, which traditionally takes a more hardline stance on migration. Dobrindt saw no compelling reason to oppose returns to Syria.
State leaders of the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt and Baden-Württemberg quickly echoed the call for swift repatriations of Syrian refugees. The timing was telling: both states face elections next year, and the CDU is feeling the heat from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is climbing in the polls with its uncompromising stance on migration — and currently leads in Saxony-Anhalt. Wadephul’s moral reservations found little sympathy among CDU politicians in these regions. Almost on cue, AfD leader Alice Weidel accused the CDU of “refusing to deport.”
Henning Hoff of the German Council on Foreign Relations wrote to DW: “There is great unease within the CDU in light of current polling. Key parts of the party believe the momentum can be reversed with ‘greater toughness’ in migration policy, and they are determined not to show weakness.”
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At the same time, he warned that it is not only “inhumane” but also “unrealistic” to believe that “around one million Syrian refugees, many of them well integrated, could simply be ‘sent home.’ The conditions in Syria do not allow for that.”
Legally, only a small fraction of Syrians in Germany are currently eligible for deportation. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, 920 Syrians in Germany are currently required to leave the country and do not have temporary residence permits, while another 9,780 are required to leave but have temporary residence permits because there have been no deportations to Syria in the past 12 years.
There are currently around 950,000 Syrian immigrants living in Germany, the vast majority of whom came as refugees during the civil war there 10 years ago and have humanitarian protection status. Many are well-integrated and even have German citizenship.
Other Wadephul comments that upset his party
Syria isn’t the only issue where Germany’s foreign minister has faced pushback from within his own party.
In August, he warned that deploying German troops to Ukraine would “overburden” the Bundeswehr, a remark that risked undercutting Chancellor Merz’s negotiating position just as he prepared for high-level talks in Washington with US President Donald Trump.
Wadephul also drew criticism for objecting to what he described as Germany’s “forced solidarity” with Israel, just as Chancellor Merz was publicly defending Israel against genocide accusations. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called the phrase “very problematic and unfortunate” in an interview with the German daily Die Welt.
Hoff observed: “The Foreign Minister repeatedly speaks too spontaneously and without due consideration — even on topics that are not his responsibility, such as Germany’s role in the ‘Coalition of the Willing,’ where he expressed concern about overstretching the Bundeswehr. Less would be more.”
Wadephul also caused a diplomatic ripple with China, one of Germany’s most important trading partners, by abruptly canceling a planned visit to Beijing. The decision came after it became clear that no meetings had been scheduled for him beyond one with his counterpart Wang Yi. The move reportedly offended the Chinese government.
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Similar problems in previous German government
The opposition has been quick to capitalize on the CDU’s internal divisions. “Even in foreign policy, the Chancellor and the CDU must now ask themselves why they even have a Foreign Minister,” quipped Green Party parliamentary leader Katharina Dröge. “Every time the Foreign Minister speaks, his own party members question him.”
The coalition government between the center-right CDU/CSU and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) had vowed to outperform its unpopular predecessor, the three-way coalition led by SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which toppled one year ago.
Merz, in particular, had pledged to put an end to infighting, especially on foreign policy. Under Scholz, tensions with former Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock were frequent, as she occasionally appeared to chart her own course in foreign affairs, independent of the Chancellery.
Now, the same problem appears to be resurfacing, this time within the CDU itself.
“The promised ‘coherent foreign policy’ is not materializing,” said Henning Hoff. “That’s partly due to Wadephul’s rhetoric, which has made him unpopular within his own party, but also to the Chancellery’s lack of coordination and — at least in this case — its delayed response.”
This article was originally written in German.
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