On a visit to Syria, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul commented on the difficult living conditions people face amid the postwar reality. The context of the comments seemed to jar with his party’s deportation plans.
The coalition government of center-right Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and center-left Social Democrats (SPD), which has been in office since May 2025, is aiming to significantly increase the number of people who have been ordered to leave the country in the campaign they are calling a “repatriation offensive.” However, the political and media debate has tended to focus on a different word: deportations.
The dispute over deportations to Syria, a country devastated by a long civil war, shows just how difficult this undertaking is — and just how divergent opinions are, even among the government’s two conservative Christian parties. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) recently visited Syria and subsequently expressed caution: “Only possible to a very limited extent at this point in time,” was his assessment of the possibility of forced deportations.
Source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-migration-syria-deportations-repatriation/a-74610937