Ten years after Germany accepted nearly 900,000 refugees, politicians have rewritten the story of the 2015 “refugee summer” as a crisis instead of a humanitarian effort. Far-right narratives, led by the Alternative für Deutschland, have influenced public discourse and the party platforms of various parties across the political spectrum.


The 2025 coalition, led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has now turned this language into law, institutionalizing a harsh policy of deterrence and enforcement.

September 2015, a refugee shelter in Berlin: Angela Merkel, then Chancellor of Germany and leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), smiles into a smartphone camera in her trademark blazer. Standing next to her is Anas Modamani, a 17-year-old Syrian refugee at the time, capturing what would become Germany’s most iconic selfie.

The image came to symbolize a welcoming Germany 

one that, in 2015, took in 890,000 people seeking protection, many of them fleeing Syria’s civil war. Merkel’s now-famous remark, “If we now have to start apologizing for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is not my country,” provided the image with its moral caption. This was the beginning of the so-called “refugee summer”.

Merkel’s decision was later portrayed as a humanitarian gesture

As a “border opening” and a “loss of control.” As a matter of law, Germany’s borders had never been officially closed. The Dublin III Regulation, which normally requires asylum seekers to apply in the first European Union country they enter, was not consistently enforced. Merkel’s decisions were also in line with the underlying principles of the Schengen Agreement, which emphasizes open borders within the EU. Still, 2015 was frequently reframed in retrospect as a state of emergency, becoming a key reference point for political narratives that would gain traction in the years that followed.

Reinforcing the narrative

Ten years after the refugee summer, people can still hear the echoes. On April 9, 2025, the Grand Coalition was announced by Chancellor Friedrich Merz at a press conference, highlighting its formation under the newly elected leader. The coalition is composed of the conservative CDU and Christian Social Union (CSU), as well as the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

In the proceedings, Markus Söder, leader of the CSU and Bavarian Minister President, declared, “We are going back to the pre-2015 era. These many years of uncertainty are over.” In doing so, Söder and his party reinforce the narrative of migration as a kind of national trauma — a decade-long chapter that Germany must now overcome.

This framing has been shaped primarily by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which became the second-strongest party in the February federal election, winning 20.8% of the vote. This narrative was echoed by Merkel’s critics within the CDU and amplified by other EU voices such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The AfD: Agenda-setting from the opposition

Since 2015, the AfD has steadily pushed its migration stance further to the right, dragging the broader political discourse with it. At its 2016 national convention, the party’s nationalist-conservative wing took control, establishing hardline positions on border closures, anti-Muslim rhetoric and isolationism as central to its platform. In its 2017 manifesto, the AfD declared the constitutional right to asylum historically obsolete, claiming it could no longer withstand “mass abuse.”

In the summer of 2021, following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the AfD reiterated its hardline stance with the familiar slogan: “2015 must not be repeated.” Afghan refugees, the party insisted, should be denied entry, not out of pragmatic concern, but as a deliberate act of identity politics.

By 2023, the AfD exploited the mounting strain on local governments to house asylum seekers, casting it as evidence of state failure. In parliament, the party demanded the “immediate halt of all intake programs” and popularized terms like “illegale migranten” or “illegal migrants” — language that has since crossed party lines.

In the 2024 European elections, the AfD used the far-right slogan “remigration” to call for a reversal of the migration that has occurred since 2015. Beneath its legalistic phrasing lay a nationalist agenda: the idea that Germany had been overrun and must be reclaimed. Public outrage was immediate and intense, but the symbolic impact had already landed.  The term once again shifted the boundaries of what could be said.

Reframed language enters the mainstream

The political mainstream language around migration now reflects the terms and frames that originated in AfD circles.

In 2022, then-CDU leader Friedrich Merz urged the “traffic light” coalition of SPD, Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) to deliver on its promised “repatriation offensive” — a term the AfD had already used in its 2017 platform. In January 2024, that coalition passed legislation to speed up deportations and expand detention for those slated to leave the country. The notion of an “offensive” against rejected asylum seekers has since gained cross-party traction.

Merz’s rhetoric has increasingly mirrored AfD narratives and language. In 2022, he accused rejected asylum seekers of burdening the healthcare system, claiming they “sit at the dentist getting new teeth while German citizens can’t get appointments.” He later described Ukrainian refugees as engaging in “welfare tourism” and, after the 2023 New Year’s Eve riots, referred to migrant children as “little pashas” who disrespect teachers.

These remarks reflect how deeply the AfD’s narratives and terminology have entered mainstream political discourse, and that of Germany’s current Chancellor. This rhetoric is more than a semantic shift. It reflects a deeper framing of migration, not as a societal task, but as a security, cultural or economic threat.

Yet the data tells a different story: by 2023, around 64% of refugees who arrived in 2015 were employed, most of them full-time. Many are now integral to Germany’s workforce and society. By all means, it is the AfD’s narrative — not the empirical reality — that has defined the political language on migration across party lines.

Language becomes policy: the 2025 coalition agreement

The shift in language over recent years has long since made its way into actual policy, as seen in the new coalition agreement between the CDU, CSU and SPD.

Even under Angela Merkel, the German government had introduced the first tightening measures: family reunification was restricted, certain countries of origin were declared “safe” and centralized intake centers for fast-track procedures were established. The “traffic light” coalition that followed largely maintained this course.

A key turning point came shortly before the 2025 election, when CDU leader Merz, still in opposition, sparked controversy by suggesting that migration legislation could be passed even with support from the far-right AfD. This broke with Germany’s postwar consensus and signaled a further erosion of the political firewall around the extreme right.

The new agreement, helmed by  Merz, doubles down on deterrence and enforcement. The proposed “repatriation offensive” promises accelerated deportations, aided by fast-track courts and stricter expulsion rules. The government will no longer be obligated to actively investigate asylum claims — refugees must now prove their cases themselves. The plan also includes detention without legal counsel, permanent holding facilities for rejected asylum seekers with criminal records and a two-year suspension of family reunification.

The new government has broken with the political ethos of 2015.

Migration researcher Marcus Engler describes the current approach as “hyperactive,” noting that “It’s one restriction after another, with no impact assessments and no evidence they will actually work.”

A case in point is Merz’s order for intensified border checks across the country, launched symbolically on the first day of the new government. While these led to a short-term uptick in rejections, Engler notes their actual impact has been “limited at best.” Meanwhile, the costs are high: strained police forces and mounting criticism from European neighbors.

Numbers were already falling before the new government took office in May: just 12,350 asylum applications were filed in January 2025, less than half as many as the year before.

Politicians, such as former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), cited this as proof that tougher measures were effective.

But migration scholars like Hannes Schammann caution against simplistic interpretations. Migration, he notes, follows complex global dynamics and cannot be turned on and off like a faucet: “Border checks, deportations, migration deals – these are just small puzzle pieces. The bigger picture is far more complex.” Schammann further points out, “In some of the key crisis regions affecting Germany, the situation has recently stabilized.”

Alternative narratives on the sidelines

The new coalition agreement has solidified a political reality: the AfD, which was classified as a far-right extremist party just this May by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, continues to set the tone of the migration debate. The party did not merely react to the events of 2015; it interpreted them, reframed them and rewrote their meaning.

Attempts to challenge this narrative have gained little traction. Critics accuse the new government of abandoning responsibility and integration in favor of “further isolation and calculated deterrence.”

According to a statement by Pro Asyl, a leading refugee advocacy group in Germany, the coalition agreement blocks “the last legal escape routes for the persecuted” by limiting humanitarian admissions and suspending family reunification. Pushbacks at the borders represent “a blatant violation of human rights obligations and European law.” Rather than tackling root causes or building structural solutions, the agreement reflects a logic of political symbolism.

“It is not so-called ‘irregular migration’ that divides our society,” the group argues, “but longstanding social inequality and unresolved problems that have been ignored for far too long.”

As early as 2023, a group of 270 scholars specializing in migration and refugee law had called for a reset of asylum policy grounded in human rights and constitutional principles. They advocated for concrete strategies and investments in reception, integration and local capacity. Many municipalities, they noted, were still willing and able to take in asylum seekers — a potential that remained largely overlooked in the national conversation.

The underestimated power of the far-right

With the AfD’s language, demands and interpretations moving from the fringes of the opposition into the mainstream of political discourse and practice, a new consensus has replaced Merkel’s 2015 approach. In essence, an approach rooted in deterrence has replaced an approach rooted in international and European legal norms.

The idea that better social policies could undercut support for the far-right isn’t wrong, but it falls short. Parties like the AfD don’t just respond to crises — they help shape them discursively. They set the agenda, craft narratives, emotionalize debates and push the boundaries of what can be said, often long before other parties react.

The AfD operates as a movement of fear. The threats it invokes don’t need to be real — they just need to be effectively narrated. This instrumentalization of fear isn’t unique to Germany; it reflects a broader global trend in authoritarian migration rhetoric.

US President Donald Trump, for example, justified mass deportations and legal overreach in his early second presidency by inventing an “invasion threat.” In Europe, similar language is gaining ground: the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned of an “island of strangers.” Sweden has radically restricted its asylum and integration policy and left-led Denmark advances a zero-asylum approach.