German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has defended his government's efforts to turn away asylum seekers at the country's borders. He faces opposition criticism after a court ruled that the pushbacks were illegal. DW has more.
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Germancustoms cleared more than four times as many items in 2024 compared with the previous year, according to data released by the customs office on Tuesday.
"The key word here is e-commerce," Armin Rolfink, president of the German customs office, said on Tuesday.
Customs dealt with 235 million online deliveries in 2024, of which "90% come from China," Rolfink said while presenting his office's yearly report.
Finance MinisterLars Klingbeilhas said more cheap goods and counterfeit products are coming to Germany via China.
Klingbeil has said discussions are ongoing,including at the European level, about abolishing the existing tariff limit of €150 ($171), above which goods face import duties. This would affect deliveries of cheap consumer items fromwebsites like Temu.
The European Commission has proposed adding a flat fee of up to €2 on packages to tackle the surging number of small deliveries from China.
Among other items seized by the customs office were 161 weapons of war, such as guided missiles, flamethrowers and rifle grenades.
The customs office is also tasked with preventing drug smuggling. While the amount of cocaine seized dropped from 39.3 metric tons in 2023 to 16.3 tons, the officeconfiscated 12.6 tons of marijuana, up from 8.6 tons.
Rolfink said he has "no findings" on whether the rise in marijuana seizure was linked to Germany'spartial legalization of the drug in April 2024.
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Some 20,000Volkswagenemployees have already agreed to leave the company by 2030 under a sweeping cost-cutting program, the automaker says.
Board member Gunnar Kilian told a company meeting that the first steps of the "Future Volkswagen" agreement were now underway and that the company was "on track."
The firm aims to eliminate more than 35,000 of its roughly 130,000 jobs in Germany in a socially responsible manner over the next several years.
Kilian said the changes are already delivering results, with "measurable progress in factory costs in Wolfsburg" and "socially responsible job cuts" at Volkswagen's six German sites helping to speed up the company’s transformation.
The restructuring follows atough round of collective bargaining in December, which led to a multi-billion euro austerity deal between Volkswagen and IG Metall. As part of the agreement, the company committed to a job guarantee until 2030 and ruled out immediate plant closures. In exchange, workers agreed to delay wage increases.
An estimated 20,000 people will have to leave their homes in Cologne on Wednesday following the discovery of three unexploded American World War II bombs in the city's Deutz neighborhood directly on the Rhine river.
Each of the bombs weighs around 1 ton, and contains an impact fuse, which will need to be defused.
On its website, the city of Cologne said the evacuation will the city's largest since the end of the war in 1945.
The evacuation is due to begin at 8 a.m. The evacuation area includes Museum Ludwig and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, as well as large companies such as the television station RTL.
The historic center of Cologne is also in the evacuation radius, with 58 hotels and other accommodation providers needing to be evacuated. Three bridges over the Rhine will also be closed.
The Cologne-Messe/Deutz railway station, Cologne City Hall, a hospital and two nursing and retirement homes will also be evacuated but the iconic Cologne Cathedral is just outside the evacuation area. The central rail station is also outside the evacuation zone.
Bomb disposal is a normal occurrence in Cologne, which was one of the most heavily bombed German cities during World War II.
One of the central figures in Germany's massive"Cum-Ex" tax fraud scandal, which is estimated to have cost European treasuries tens of billions of euros at its peak — has been convicted.
Bonn Regional Court sentenced lawyer Kai-Uwe Steck to one year and 10 months in prison, suspended on probation.
Steck was found guilty of five counts of serious tax fraud and ordered to forfeit around €24 million (about $27 million). The court said his actions contributed to nearly half a billion euros in tax losses.
Presiding Judge Sebastian Hausen called Steck "a central figure" in the fraud, which involved manipulating stock trades to claim illegitimate tax rebates.
The scheme — named for transactions made with ("cum") and without ("ex") dividend rights — allowed investors to reclaim taxes they never paid.
Steck, formerly a partner of Hanno Berger — the scandal's alleged mastermind — cooperated with prosecutors and served as a key witness in the case. The court acknowledged his remorse and assistance as mitigating factors in the sentencing.
Berger was sentenced in 2022 to eight years in prison. The scandal was at its height between 2006 and 2011.
Germany'sConstitutional Courthas rejected a challenge to the results ofFebruary's parliamentary electionsbrought by the populistSahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
The BSW won 4.981% of the vote, very narrowly missing the 5% required to have representation in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament.
In its challenge, the party argued that its placement on election ballots and the failure to carry out a recount had violated its right to equal opportunity.
It claimed that up to 32,000 votes for the party were either not counted or were incorrectly assigned.
The court rejected the arguments, saying that the "applicant has not sufficiently substantiated the possibility of a violation of its right to equal opportunities."
If the BSW had overcome the 5% hurdle, the new coalition government of the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the center-left SPD would have not had a majority.
The BSW, led by Sahra Wagenknecht and Amira Mohamed Ali, splintered from the Left Party just over a year before the election, partly over Wagenknecht's continued support for Russia.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merzhas defended his government's effort to turn away asylum seekers at the country's borders, one day after a court blocked the move.
Theemergency decision by the Berlin Administrative Courtwas a blow for Merz, who has promised he will curb irregular migration.
Speaking in Berlin, the chancellor said the ruling may narrow his administration's room for maneuver, but there was still scope. "We know that we can still carry out [border] rejections."
Merz, who took office last month, said his government would "of course do this within the framework of existing European law."
"We will do so in order to protect public safety and order in our country and to prevent cities and municipalities from being overburdened," he added.
Merz stressed that Germany would have to "maintain controls on the internal" until the situation at the European Union's external borders has improved significantly in his view.
Shortly after taking office last month, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt orderedpolice to beef up border checksand turn away irregular migrants, even if they apply for asylum.
The court ruling on Monday found that three Somalis who were turned back to Poland on May 9 should have been processed under the European Union's Dublin Regulation for asylum cases. The court found that the government's evidence to proclaim a "national emergency" to justify the measure lacked sufficient evidence.
Merz's immigration policies have beenrepeatedly criticizedas violating both German and EU law.
Germany's Federal Anti-DiscriminationAgency has announcedanother rise in reportsfrom people who say they have been disadvantaged because of their race, disability or gender.
Anti-discrimination commissioner Ferda Ataman said the agency had received 11,405 reports — an increase of 6% compared with 2023 and double the number in 2019.
Most of the reports (43%) mentioned in the agency's 2024 review concerned racist discrimination.
Twenty-seven percent of the reported cases of discrimination were to do with disabilities, and 24% concerned cases where people were subjected to unfair treatment on the basis of their gender.
Here,womenwere most frequently the victims, Ataman said, with the number doubling in the past five years.
She said women mostly experienced discrimination at work or while seeking employment, with job applications by young women often ignored because they could end up having children.
Reports of sexual harassment were also at a record level of 348 for the year, she said.
Ataman said she sees a direct connection between the rise in popularity of the far-rightAlternative for Germany (AfD)party and the growing number of cases of discrimination.
"What I notice, and what we observe in the agency, is that as the approval ratings for aright-wing extremist partyrise, more and more people feel legitimated in making denigrating remarks in everyday life."
Ataman also criticized anti-discrimination laws in Germany, saying that "parking offenses are prosecuted rigorously more than discrimination against other people."
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Interior MinisterAlexander Dobrindton Tuesday called cybercriminality "a growing danger to our security," withGermany seeing a record rate of digital crimes.
"Cybercriminality is becoming constantly more aggressive, but our counterstrategies are also getting more professional," he said at the presentation of the Federal Criminal Police Office's (BKA's) cybercrime report for 2024.
Pro-Russian and anti-Israel cyberattacks are factors in the rise in cases, authorities say.
The financial damage caused by cybercrime in Germany was estimated at €178 billion ($203 billion), mostly due to blackmail.
Dobrindt said that Germany was "massively" upgrading its capacities to combat cybercrime.
But, he said,artificial intelligence(AI) was giving cybercriminals even more tools.
BKA head Holger Münch said that despite successes, just 32% of cybercrimes were able to be prosecuted in 2024, in comparison with 58% of other crimes, as most perpertrators were located outside Germany.
Two people from the UpperBavariantown of Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm have recently been infected with the rare Bornavirus, with one dying as a result, regional authorities reported on Monday.
They said that the local health department was "working intensively on clarifying a possible mode of infection of the two affected persons."
The second infected person was reported to be undergoing medical treatment.
The Bornavirus is spread by the bicolored shrew, among other animals. Contact with the excrement, urine and saliva of infected animals, who may themselves not become ill, can cause infection in humans.
According to Germany'sFriedrich Loeffler Institute, which is in charge of animal health issues, the virus is present in bicolored shrews living in many parts of Bavaria.
Up to seven cases of infection have been reported in Germany since March 2020, when registering such cases became mandatory.
So far, 55 infections have been registered across the country.
The virus was not identified as causing severe brain inflammation in humans until 2018.
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The commander of the German army division responsible for homeland security has said that Germany might have to introduce some form of conscription to ensure it hasenough soldiers to do the work needed.
"For the protection of critical defense infrastructure, I simply need more soldiers than we can currently get," Major General Andreas Henne told the RND media group in remarks published on Tuesday.
Although the army was currently relying on recruiting volunteers, this would probably not suffice to enlist the numbers of military personnel that were necessary, he said.
"The more soldiers we need, the more likely it is that we will reach the limits of voluntary enlistment," he said.
Henne did not specify what such compulsory measures would look like.
The coalition agreement struck by the conservative bloc ofChristian Democrats (CDU)and theChristian Social Union (CSU)with the center-leftSocial Democrats (SPD)contains a plan for a new military service model based on voluntary enlistment at the start.
The plan isa compromise between SPD demands for a completely voluntary system and the conservative bloc's desire to end the current suspension of compulsory military service in Germanythat was put in place in 2011.
Politicians from theGreenandLeftparties have accused the conservative bloc of ChancellorFriedrich Merzof creating migration chaos after a Berlin court ruled on Monday thatpushbacks of asylum-seekers at the border — a measure ordered by the government — were illegal.
"It is underhand and very concerning if people keep trying to test the legal framework to the limit and are also willing to break the law in the process," Green Party leader Felix Banaszak told newspapers from the Funke media group on Tuesday.
Banaszak said the conservatives, who lead the coalition government, were trying to "push through their agenda in Trump manner" by making provocative announcements and giving orders that were obviously not legally viable.
"Measures that undermine European law are not helpful, but only create chaos" amid efforts to achieve "real improvements" in migration policy, he said.
Jan van Aken, who heads the Left Party, told the dailyRheinische Postthat the government was violating the law "only because it needs scapegoats."
"The government has to finally deal with the real problems — a rent limit, an active investment policy and a wealth tax" instead of trying to distract from these issues at the cost of the weakest in society, van Aken said.
On Monday, the Berlin Administrative Court ruled that the rejection of asylum-seekers at the German border ordered by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt was against the law.
Dobrindt has, however, said that he will continue with the policy, claiming that the ruling pertained only to one specific case.
Guten Tagfrom the team in DW's newsroom in Bonn!
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