{"id":547048,"date":"2025-11-03T21:36:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T21:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/547048\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T21:36:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T21:36:14","slug":"merz-says-syrian-refugees-in-germany-must-go-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/547048\/","title":{"rendered":"Merz says Syrian refugees in Germany ‘must go home’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Friedrich Merz said Germany could ‘expel’ those who refuse to return to their countries [Getty]<\/p>\n

Chancellor Friedrich Merz<\/a> said Monday Syrian refugees in Germany must go home now that their country’s war is over or face deportation.<\/p>\n

In his latest hardline comments on migration, Merz said there was “no longer any reason” for Syrians who fled their country’s brutal 13-year war to seek asylum in Germany.<\/p>\n

“For those who refuse to return to their country, we can of course expel them,” he said during a visit to Husum, in northern Germany.<\/p>\n

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul<\/a> said Thursday on a trip to Damascus that the potential for Syrians to return was “very limited” since the war had destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.<\/p>\n

That statement caused a backlash from Merz’s and Wadephul’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, which has been struggling to avoid being outflanked by far-right parties on the explosive issue of migration.<\/p>\n

Merz said he had invited Syria’s new interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa<\/a>, whose Islamist forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad last year, to visit Germany to discuss “how we can resolve this together”.<\/p>\n

Syria “needs all its strength, and above all Syrians, to rebuild”, Merz said, adding he was confident many would return of their own accord.<\/p>\n

Around one million Syrians live in Germany, most having fled the war in a mass exodus in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friedrich Merz said Germany could ‘expel’ those who refuse to return to their countries [Getty] Chancellor Friedrich Merz…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1945,1824,6500,15287],"class_list":{"0":"post-547048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-friedrich-merz","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-syria","13":"tag-syrian-refugees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115487924759265656","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}