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Month: April 2025

Inciting Hatred and Slinging Insults: Exploring the Legal Apparatus of the BRD

Part III: Honor – final part of Jason Oberman’s article


12/04/2025

In Part I and Part II of this series, we took a look at the Volksverhetzung and Beleidigung laws, two of the laws most weaponized to repress the anti-genocide movement in Germany. Acting as the root of both these laws we found something rather peculiar: German honor, or Ehre. And it only gets stranger the deeper we look.

In the search to discover more about this peculiar notion of honor, I stumbled upon another German law that was created to protect Ehre: the second of the Nuremberg Race Laws was titled “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.” This law included prohibitions of Aryan and Jewish intermarriage and sexual relations, employment of young German women by Jewish men, and Jewish people flying the Reich’s flag. It seems that simply being non-Aryan in Germany violates the German Honor Code. And one must be willing to defend even the slightest violation of honor with murder. 

Perhaps the Holocaust itself can be seen through the lens of protection of Ehre. In exploring the German duel, I came across Ehrennotwehr, which, perhaps, could have been an undercurrent of the Nazi genocide.  Ehrennotwehr, emergency self-defence of honor,  was the vicious practice of 19th century Prussian officers; if one’s honor was somehow insulted by a lower class, who was not worthy of the honorable duel, Ehrennotwehr required sudden and extreme violence, even murder, in order to defend one’s higher positionality, avoiding the sometimes lengthy bureaucratic measures of the duel, which usually required a formal invitation, mediation and witnesses. 

Although Ehrennotwehr was technically “reserved for those occasions when the physical integrity of the officer had been violated by a member of the unwashed horde who could not render formal satisfaction [a duel] … liberal interpretations led to its indiscriminate use as an effectual method for teaching any upstart his place.” (McAleer 114) As with the duel, Ehrenotwehr illustrates the idea of achieving purity and protecting honor through the annihilation of the other, an ideology embraced by Prussia, the Nazis, and the modern German state today.

So what is this peculiar German honor, or Ehre, exactly? Where does it come from? 

In the words of scholar Kevin McAleer: “In the final analysis, [German] honor was devoid of clearly conceived ethical content” (48). Ehre seems to be rooted in codes of chivalry practiced by Crusading Knights. These honorable men conducted large scale massacres across Europe and the Middle East, including ethnic cleansing of Jews during the Rhineland Massacre. 

In fact it was only through scapegoating and persecuting Jews that these Crusaders could fabricate honor: “The vices of the knights during the Crusades and their ‘extreme quarrelsomeness and pugnacity, merciless, arrogance and greed, cruelty to the vanquished, lack of a sense of common humanity, faithlessness to those outside the circles of feudal obligation, and frequently impious disregard of religion’ […] could only be transmitted as acts of heroic chivalry on the European mainland, if contrasted to Jewish vices.”

The imaginary Feindbild – the Jew, the Communist, the Palestinian – comes into play here; it is only through creating an imagined enemy that is so unfathomably and deeply dishonorable, one could claim any sort of honor while committing mass murder. This false narrative would have been critical in establishing the honorable nature and justification of the Crusaders’ ethnic cleansing of Jews in aforementioned Rhineland massacre, the genocide of Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia, the Holocaust, and the current German funded genocide in Palestine.

Germany’s own Crusading Knights, the honorable Teutonic Order, were  founded in Palestine to “avenge the dishonoring of God and His Cross and to fight so that the Holy Land, which the infidels subjected to their rule, shall belong to the Christians” (Sterns, 204) They hoped to follow in the footsteps of their peculiar reimagining of the Jewish Maccabees as knights who, in the Order’s words, “defeated and exterminated [pagans] so that they cleansed once again the Holy City which the pagans had defiled” (Sterns, 204). After they failed to ethnically cleanse Palestine, they developed their code of honor while committing atrocious wars of extermination and enslavement in north eastern Europe, laying the genocidal path Hitler would later follow through the Eastern Front. 

What’s more, the Teutonic Code of Honor even includes an early form of Beleidigung legislation: the first Book of the Order from 1264 states : “No brother shall call a Christian a traitor or a renegade or an evil smelling bastard, or abuse him in such terms.” (Sterns, 243). Remember this rule of protecting Christians from slander was conceived at a time when the Teutonic Order,  “who for love of honor and the fatherland have exterminated the enemies of the faith with a strong hand” (Sterns, 204). The Order was legislating against verbally insulting Christians while literally attempting ethnic cleansing.

Teutonic Ehre only took on greater heights as time went on. It was so highly esteemed in Germany that both the 2nd Reich (Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Kingdom of Prussia) and the Nazis adopted it: 

“By decree of its leader Heinrich Himmler[…], every SS man had ‘the right and duty to defend his honor by force of arms,’ and in a letter to the SS Legal Service in 1938 he outlined the conventional Wilhelmine guidelines for doing so. What is more, Himmler patterned his own cult of honor, like that of his Wilhelmine predecessors, on medieval archetypes. He modeled his ‘new knighthood,’ his ‘sworn liege men,’ on the ‘brutalized chivalry’ of the Teutonic Knights” (McAleer 210)  

But Teutonic Honor didn’t end with the Nazis: the modern Bundeswehr (German Military) gives out a “Badge of Honor” with the Teutonic Order’s Iron Cross. Antisemitism commissioner Uwe Becker is also a lay member of the order, and one must wonder about the role of Ehre in the “war on antisemitism.”

The German conception of honor has an interesting distinction from other honor codes: it is guided by Standesehre, caste honor (McAleer 35), defined as the collective honor of Germany’s elite class; “Its definition also denoted group solidarity over and against the lower orders, for in every ‘affair,’ or Ehrenhandel, the participants were representing not only their own interests but those of their class.” (McAleer 3) 

For elite men, individual honor and caste honor were therefore indistinguishable (McAleer 35). Therefore, the German notion of Ehre is primarily concerned with hierarchies of power — one can only be honorable if one is above those who are not. We could see clearly how this is also tied into the Christian Crusaders’ ethno-religious honor above Jews, and this honor could have evolved into the honor of the Aryan race over all others. 

The other nefarious element of German honor is its entanglement with the duel. It was the duel itself, that is murderous violence, which distinguished and guaranteed honorable positionality: 

“The duel drew a strict line of division between “men of honor” (Ehrenmänner) and the rest of society, which enjoyed none of the psychic, social, or legal entitlements of honorable status. Among German males, in order to be considered salonfähig—fit for good society—it was necessary that one also be satisfaktionsfähig— capable of dispensing satisfaction in a duel. Highly dangerous rencontres endowed this term with the real substance of character, and so upper class men of honor also pretended a moral supremacy that bolstered their claim to leadership of the German nation” (McAleer 3-4). 

One’s ability to duel determined one’s class and power, and it is through the duel that one could uphold one’s class and power positions. During the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, this was strictly limited to elite white Protestant men who made up about 5% of the population. (McAleer 35). 

These elite German males seemed to be so fearful of being insulted and lose their honor that Professor Karl Binding stated that “the eternal Angst of the German that his honor might be robbed of him by any frivolous fellow, his trembling worry that perhaps already through an upturned nose or a derisive word his whole world has gone up in smoke.” 

Binding even came up with the diagnosis “Ehren-nervosität” — a “chronic nervous affliction of the [upper class], usually characterized by acute and persistent hallucinations that someone was trying to trespass their personal integrity by belittling them.” (McAleer 40). I think many of us have met people on the streets and subways of Berlin, often in uniform, who have this condition. 

As a man of honor, it was seen as infinitely worse to quietly take an insult rather than lose one’s life in a petty pistol duel over a small insult against you or a female acquaintance. As McAleer explains, “This was the greatest infamy in a world where the essence of manhood was affectation of a serene scorn for one’s own puny existence. […] It was and is better to die/kill rather than be seen as a weak insulted person.”(McAleer 42) Given this commitment to murder and death, we can further understand the system of “ethics” which is the bedrock of German culture itself. 

Through exploring this strange German Ehre, perhaps we can see another aspect of Germany’s support of Israel. It may be a long shot, but bear with me.  As we learned from evaluation of Volksverhetzung law, human rights in Germany entails applying German notions of “human dignity” or honor to certain populations or persons. These populations, therefore, must also fall into a strict and violent hierarchical code as well. 

Through the lens of German Ehre, the Palestinian people insulted Israel through the October 7 attacks and as the German political elite and mainstream media seems to be unable to distinguish between Israel and Jewish people, Palestine therefore insulted Jews as a whole. Since Jewish people are awarded “human dignity” in modern Germany, so we are told, Jews are therefore required to defend their honor. As the German state and mainstream media, through horrific anti-Palestinian racism and persecution, has implied that Palestinians, as non-Aryan Arabic people, occupy a lower racial positionality compared to white Ashkenazi Jews, Ehrenotwehr, honorable self-defense, or extermination, is an order. It must be quick, extreme, brutal, and absolute.

As the Nuremberg Laws imply, genocide is the way a country defends honor against ‘inferior races’, and it is actually a requirement to uphold the honor of the ethno-nationstate. We should also note that Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of Zionism, valued Ehre enough to suggest that the duel might help the social position of European Jews (Schorske 160). Furthermore, Suad Hanine Shatou-Shehadeh, in her Doctoral Thesis from Columbia University, beautifully articulates in great detail how Honor is one of the fundamental bedrocks of the Zionist movement.

As was previously revealed in the Teutonic Order’s Rule Book of 1264, we discovered that the German white christian elite have long dreamed of a vision of Jews as being honorable through commiting genocide in Palestine; they had viewed the Maccabees as honorable Knights who “exterminated” pagans and “cleansed” the Holy Land (Sterns, 204). Now Zionism has begun to fulfill this vision, and the German ruling class is one of its most voracious supporters.

Because of their close ties, Germany’s honor is bound up in the honor of Israel (recall Israel is Germany’s Staatsräson). This means that Jews who refuse this challenge, who do not defend their Ehre, and oppose Zionism or simply Israeli state policies, are scorned with great hatred and resentment. They have thrown away their honor and insulted the honor of the German state, its Staatsehre one might say, by anointing them with that Ehre and “human dignity” in the first place. They are reduced to the dishonorable class and deserve punishment for insulting more honorable Jews and the German state as a whole

Moreover, given that the notion of “salonfähigkeit”, or being fit for good society, is dependant on one’s ability to support and participate in murderous violence against those who ‘insult’ your honor, we can further understand why only those people who support genocide against ‘dishonorables’ compose the German elite and ruling class. 

And if, as Whitman suggested, honor was democratized to be a privilege and responsibility of all people in Germany (catalyzed through, if you recall, the Nazi expansion of Beleidigung to protect all Aryans), all people in Germany must also follow the German Ehre code, and can therefore only be fit for society when they actively support the extermination of ‘honor insulters’.

Through this three part series, we have therefore discovered that modern Germany not only has laws that are distinctly anti-democratic, but it also has created a legal, ethical, and societal framework to require its population to avidly support genocide and ethnic cleansing of those whos mere existence insults the honor of the state.

© Jason Oberman, all rights reserved, 2025

Works Cited

  • McAleer, Kevin. Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-De-Siecle Germany. Princeton University Press, 1994.
  • Schorske, Carl E. Fin-De-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Vintage Books, 1981. 
  • Shatou-Shehadeh, Suad Hanine. The Zionist Quest for Honor: France and Jewish Zionist Ideology and Subjectivity. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2021.
  • Sterns, Indrikis. “The Statutes of the Teutonic Knights: A Study of Religious Chivalry“. Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1969. 

Whitman, James Q. “Enforcing Civility and respect: Three societies” The Yale Law Journal, vol. 109, 2000, pp. 1279–1398, .

Red Flag: What Does the Liberation of Buchenwald Mean Today?

Nathaniel Flakin’s Weekly Column for The Left Berlin


11/04/2025

On April 11, 1945, as U.S. troops approached Buchenwald, the resistance groups inside the concentration camp launched an insurrection. The secret leadership committee, made up of prisoners of different nationalities, handed out weapons to the inmates who proceeded to storm the gate house and the guard towers. Most of the SS guards had fled a few hours earlier — the rest were disarmed. When the U.S. army reached Buchenwald, they found a camp under the control of its prisoners.

In the following days, a wave of declarations were published. The most famous, the Oath of Buchenwald, ends with the line: “The eradication of Nazism as well as its roots is our guiding principle.”

Yet this document, influenced by Stalinist ideology, was contradictory. It thanked the “allied Armies of the Americans, English, Soviets and all Freedom Armies.” Yet these so-called Freedom Armies had done very little to save Europe’s Jews or other victims of the Nazis. Military commanders had refused to bomb the railroads leading to Auschwitz, for example, which could have saved countless lives. Throughout the war, the U.S. government had refused entry to Jewish refugees from Europe.

The Western allies were not interested in defending freedom and democracy — they were fighting for their own capitalist interests and colonial empires. At the end of the war against Nazi Germany, these “Freedom Armies” were carrying out massacres in Indochina, Algeria, India, Indonesia, etc.

A much more realistic assessment of the situation came from the Trotskyist prisoners, who published a Declaration of the International Communists of Buchenwald. They explained that the roots of fascism lay in the capitalist system, and demanded that the bourgeoisie pay for its crimes: “Expropriation of the banks, heavy industry and the large estates! Control of production by the unions and the workers councils!”

Today, 80 years later, the legacy of the Buchenwald resistance is more relevant than ever. A far-right party is topping the polls in Germany, with 24% of votes. Even more ominously, the new government of the CDU and SPD has committed itself to carrying out the AfD’s program. They want to eliminate, in practice, the right to asylum, a right that was established as a consequence of the German state’s crimes. 

Last Sunday, there was an official ceremony at Buchenwald, including nine survivors of the camp. Omri Boehm, an Israeli-German philosopher and a descendent of Holocaust survivors, was invited to speak and then disinvited after a campaign by the Israeli embassy. Boehm is not a leftist, a socialist, or an anti-Zionist. He defends Kantian universalism that includes human rights for all. He could probably be compared to early liberal Zionists like Martin Buber, as he has proposed a binational state for Jews and Palestinians with equal rights for all.

Yet in the eyes of Israel’s far-right government, even liberal Zionists are traitors and antisemites, and they managed to get Boehm excluded. As much as the Zionist state claims to represent all Jews, they are eager to erase the entire history of Jewish universalism, including figures such as Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, and Albert Einstein.

A young human rights activist closed her speech at the ceremony with a call to end the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. This was met with a sharp rebuke from the Buchenwald memorial, who say that reference to any other genocide amounts to an “instrumentalization” of the Holocaust. But isn’t it the other way around? Isn’t the camp being “instrumentalized” by an Israeli government with a far-right agenda?

The Oath of Buchenwald calls for a struggle against fascism — it includes nothing about defending a colonial project to build an an apartheid state. Today, Israel’s government is backing far-right parties in Europe with fascist roots.

The memory of the victims of Buchenwald — including Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, socialists, communists, etc — demands that we struggle against fascism and every form of oppression. Following their example, we need to unite across borders in the struggle for self-liberation. And as the Trotskyists’ statement reminds us, this means fighting against the system that brings forth fascism: capitalism.

Red Flag is a weekly column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel Flakin has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears on Friday at The Left Berlin.

Activism within the Queer Community – Attitudes and Engagement

Invitation to take part in my survey


09/04/2025

I am a PhD student at the SFU in Berlin researching how queer/ LGBTQIA* individuals define activism, and how they interact or have interacted with this concept it in their personal lives. I started out my PhD with the intention of researching online activism and social dynamics in online spaces, but soon decided to move my focus away from specifically online interactions. I instead started trying to materialise my many layers of interest in how activism works more broadly.

My contact with the idea of activism was shaped by my upbringing and the many conversations I have had with friends and acquaintances over the years discussing political topics. These conversations, especially ones with people who are more informed, more personally active, or know more about an area of the world than I do, have been very enriching and important to me. At the same time they have become the subject of my scientific curiosity.

Who had made their points in what way? What were the arguments and strategies, the points in common, the disagreements? How did people name the collection of their world views? Did these definitions differ between people? What was the significance of being called a communist, anarchist or Marxist-Leninist? How were groups and projects assessed when their labelling didn’t match up with one’s own? Where were lines in what people consider legitimate and illegitimate action?

While all of these questions popped up and were slowly crystallising in my head, I found myself more and more also focused on the issue currently most central to myself (as often happens with psychological research projects):

How come some people found a “way in” to social or political areas of action and some ended up stuck hoping they were helping in some way? How did people wind up associated with certain groups, or finding their way into different activities? What effects did these activities have on the world? Did they make the people doing them feel enriched, hopeful? What reasons were people identifying when they felt they couldn’t/didn’t want to make the step into being active themselves?

As I am a queer person and the majority of my friends use this label or would place themselves within the LGBTQIA* umbrella, I felt that my curiosity about activism at large has been strongly intertwined with my curiosity about queerness. A lot of texts I read emerged from the fields of gender studies or queer studies, and many of the lived experiences of the people around me were shaped by intersectional experiences of oppression. The awareness of being part of a minority and experiencing discrimination shaped many discussions and world views. Inside of my own in-person group as well as on the internet and in larger community spaces, discussions about the intricate political aspects of queer identities were prevalent.

Who received more privilege and why, and was this distinction even important to make? Were queer issues tied to other discriminated/ oppressed groups? And if yes, in what ways and what was to be done about it? How could solidarity between people with different identities and issues work? Was queerness inherently political, and if yes what did “queerness” and “political” even mean to the people discussing the question?

Most of these above-mentioned topics have been widely discussed and analysed across many disciplines throughout the years, as well as being thought about and figured out anew by every queer individual and friend group. I do not expect to be able to solve any of these discussions with my work.

Through my PhD project, I am only trying to condense all my questions into one project and get a multilayered pool of answers to better understand how all the factors play together to shape individuals’ interactions with the topic.

The final motivator for my project is, paradoxically, the feeling of being stuck and unable to become more politically active. Talk about not knowing where to start or not feeling qualified/ oppressed/ knowledgeable enough is everywhere I look on social media and in personal chats with friends. The worsening political situation is leaving many people feeling scared, angry and hopeless without the feeling of being able to engage meaningfully and make a change. At the same time, it seems that many people who are struggling and would like to find a way to start find it difficult to get in touch with people who are already more active and ask for guidance.

The final form of my project was developed to reflect the connection and layeredness of all the aforementioned topics.

  • I want to understand what activism means to others, so the survey explores personal definitions of activism and what activities fall under it.
  • I want to understand what helps people take agency, so the survey explores obstacles that people encounter while trying to work towards being politically active, as well as support systems and strategies that people found to break through.
  • I want to understand what role queer identities, communities and discourse around queerness plays, so the survey explores nuances of belonging and personal identities.
  • I want to understand how systems of oppression affect people trying to break through, so the survey explores factors such as economic situation, health, mental capacities and experiences of discrimination.

Hopefully the answers to these questions will shed light onto the phenomenon in general, but will also help support those that wish to engage (more). In future steps of this project, I hope to make my results available to organisations and anyone else looking for information about entry barriers to activism.

To be able to do all of this, we need your input! Experience with activism is not necessary!

As a first phase of this project, we have created an online questionnaire of about 20-30min with a mix of open and closed questions. If you identify as queer or part of the LGBTIA* community in any way and would like to share with us your views on the topic, please follow this link.

In the second phase, we will conduct in-depth qualitative interviews to really dive into the nitty-gritty of how each individual person navigates their own complex situation and how their decisions shape their interaction (or lack thereof) with activism.

News from Berlin and Germany, 9th April 2025

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


NEWS FROM BERLIN

Four Berlin residents threatened with deportation on political grounds

The Berlin Senate has issued deportation orders to four residents, each of whom have been targeted by authorities following their involvement in pro-Palestine actions. The orders are set to take effect in less than a month. None of the four have been convicted of any crime. The news, first reported in The Intercept, is even more surprising since three of the activists come from EU countries: two are citizens of Ireland, while the other is a Polish national. The fourth is an American citizen. Lawyers for each of them have filed a formal appeal challenging the legality of the deportation orders. Source: theberliner

Berlin and Tel Aviv agree on city partnership

Berlin has a new twin city, the Israeli metropolis of Tel Aviv, as announced by Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU). The twinning agreement will be officially signed during Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai’s visit to Berlin on May 5. Tel Aviv will thus become Berlin’s 19th twin city in total. As the city in which the Shoah was planned and carried out, Berlin has “a special responsibility and obligation towards Israel and to protect Jewish life,” Wegner declared. He added that the two cities have a great deal in common socially, historically, culturally and economically. Source: tagesspiegel

Mediators present proposal for collective bargaining agreement at BVG

Mediators Matthias Platzeck (SPD) and Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke) have worked out a proposal for an agreement between the parties to the collective bargaining dispute at Berlin’s public transport company (BVG). Among other things, the proposal now provides 430 euros more basic salary over a period of two years. In addition, bonuses for shift work and driving duties as well as the Christmas bonus will be increased. The salary in some occupational groups will increase by just over 20%, mentioned Platzeck, mediator for the BVG. Ramelow, who acted as mediator for the ver.di trade union, described the pay rise as necessary to make BVG fit for the future. Source: rbb

NEWS FROM GERMANY

DB: another huge loss and record low punctuality rate

Deutsche Bahn (DB) posted a loss of around 1.8 billion euros in 2024. DB now sits on top of a total debt of some 32 billion euros, some of which it hopes to pay off by selling the high-performing logistics subsidiary DB Schenker to its Danish competitor DSV. At the same time, punctuality in long-distance transport in Germany hit a historic low in 2024, with just 62.5% of trains arriving on time. DB CEO Richard Lutz – who took home a significantly increased salary of 2.1 million euros in 2024, including bonus payments – said that the railway company was facing its “biggest crisis since the railway reform.” Source: iamexpat

EU: People in Germany should stockpile 3 days of emergency supplies

As part of its new Preparedness Strategy, the European Commission said it wanted to encourage residents in all 27 member countries, including Germany, to begin stockpiling essential goods and resources. They encourage everyone to take “proactive measures to prepare for crises.” Specifically, every resident should have a 72-hour “resilience kit,” equipped with food, water, medicine, matches, a radio, essential documents like passports and tools like a Swiss Army knife. Germany has been ramping up its preparedness amid the ongoing global turmoil. Alongside relaxing the historic debt brake to increase defence spending, the government announced plans to reintroduce a network of public bunkers last year. Source: iamexpat

Philosopher Omri Boehm not allowed to speak at Buchenwald memorial service

The 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp threatens to be overshadowed by a scandal. Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm, who is critical of the Israeli government and memory culture, was initially asked to give a speech at the ceremony that will take place in Weimar. The request was however withdrawn. Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials, confirmed the incident. A conflict had been brewing between the memorial and representatives of the Israeli government over Boehm’s invitation, and Wagner declared that he wanted to protect the survivors from being, in the worst case, instrumentalised. The memorial centre affirms that it still appreciates Boehm’s “integrity and his outstanding academic achievements.” Source: spiegel

Several schools in Duisburg closed

There were no regular classes at many schools in Duisburg on Monday. The police have confirmed that the reason was several threatening messages received by the Gesamtschule Duisburg-Mitte. The school had already received a right-wing extremist threatening email on Friday, and another one on Sunday added a list of other schools under threat. Even though the authorities do not believe there is an acute threat situation, those schools remained closed on Monday. Source: tagesschau

Bielefeld: headmaster denounces pupils singing fascist chants

Pupils from Bielefeld travelled to the memorial site of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (Lower Saxony) in 2024 – the place where Anne Frank died in 1945. Some pupils sang a rewritten version of Gigi d’Agostino’s hit L’amour toujours on the memorial’s central square. The version had previously been sang in videos of a Whitsun party in the luxury resort of Kampen on Sylt, where partygoers chanted the racist message “Deutschland den Deutschen.” The supervisory staff at the memorial heard the chants and stopped it. When the incident reached the headmaster in Bielefeld, he reacted, imposing disciplinary measures against the pupils. Source: rtl

Germany no longer the main destination for asylum applications in the EU

For the first time in years, Germany is no longer the leader in asylum applications within the European Union. This was reported by Welt am Sonntag, citing a report by the EU Commission dated 2 April 2025, marked as confidential and with data from the 1st quarter of 2025. According to “Report No. 460” from the European Union Asylum Agency (EUAA), France is now in the first place, with 40,871 asylum requests. Spain follows in second, with 39,318 applications. Germany, where 37,387 people applied for asylum in the first quarter of the year, comes in third. Source: dw

Day of Action Against the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum

This Pact Kills


10 April 2025 → One year after the EU Parliament adopted the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, we will not stay silent. We will take to the streets, raise awareness, and resist.

This Pact kills. It abolishes asylum and movement, criminalizes migration, and strengthens state repression. Once it enters into force (June 2026) it will further isolate, render invisible, make precarious and deport people arriving in Europe. It fuels far-right policies and turns Europe into a fortress of exclusion.

We say NO to borders. NO to state-sponsored racism. NO to this attack on human rights.
Anti-migration policies impose a world where survival is a daily struggle, where borders kill and where people are criminalised. The EU Asylum and Migration Pact is not an exception, but a laboratory of repression, neo-colonial exclusion and state-sponsored racism.
It is the perfect tool for far-right and fascist governments to fuel, fund and legitimise their national anti-immigration policies.

Fighting the Pact is an indispensable and urgent part of a broader struggle for social, civil and human rights.

On 10 April 2025, one year after the adoption of the Pact, we will not celebrate. We will take to the streets and protest everywhere at the same time: in the capitals of our countries, in the EU institutions, at the borders, in every detention centre. We must continue to fight for open borders, the decolonisation of Europe and rights for all.

The Berlin action Letters of Resistance takes place on Thursday, 10th April at 6pm in the MarktKulturHalle, Hanns-Eisler-Str. 93.