BERLIN — A Berlin court ruled Monday that the German government’s push to turn away asylum-seekers at the country’s borders is unlawful, upending a key feature of conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s promised crackdown on migration.

“People who submit an asylum application during border controls on German territory may not be turned back,” the court said in a statement on its decision. The ruling came in response to a complaint by three Somali asylum-seekers who crossed into Germany from Poland in May, but were then returned by German police.

The ruling poses a major challenge to Merz, who in the lead up to his conservatives’ election victory earlier this year promised to implement an “effective entry ban” on undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers from his first day in office. Merz made that promise under pressure from the rising far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which ran on an anti-immigration platform and is now the country’s strongest opposition party.  

Shortly after Merz took office last month, his  interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, announced he would send several thousand additional police to Germany’s borders to conduct checks, declaring it “a clear signal to the world and to Europe that the policy in Germany has changed.” The announcement angered Germany’s neighbors, with Polish authorities in particular criticizing Merz’s government for creating traffic and inhibiting the movement of people and goods within the Schengen Area.

Following the ruling, Dobrindt challenged the scope of the court’s decision, suggesting it only applied to the three Somali complainants.

“We are sticking to the returns,” he said. “We see that the legal basis is there and will therefore continue to proceed in this way, regardless of this individual case decision.”

Although the binding effect of the decision is limited to the three Somali complainants, the government would be well advised to apply the ruling to similar cases, a court spokesperson told POLITICO. The court’s decision is final and cannot be appealed, the spokesperson also said.

Legal experts have said the German government’s policy is in violation of European law — and some argued the new policy amounted to political theater. Under the so-called Dublin Regulation, European countries are normally obliged to admit asylum applicants to check which member country is responsible for adjudicating their request. That argument was confirmed by the court in Berlin on Monday.

Dobrindt, however, argues that Germany is within its rights to suspend European law based on the need to safeguard internal security and to maintain law and order. Such a move is necessary, he has said, “to counteract excessive demands” asylum-seekers are placing on municipalities.

The court, however, ruled the government had failed to sufficiently demonstrate a threat to public safety or order.

The number of asylum-seekers coming to Germany declined by about 30 percent last year, even as migration remained a major political issue; 230,000 people applied for asylum in Germany for the first time in 2024.

AfD politicians are likely to portray the ruling as evidence that Merz is unable to live up to his promises to crack down on migration.