I'm John Batchel with my good colleague, Judy Dempsey, in Berlin for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a senior scholar.

F.T. Right on time.

German court deems asylum seekers rejection at border illegal. That's in quotes.

Ruling could undermine Chancellor Friedrich Merz's plan to cut

immigration, but government says it will maintain strategy. What exactly is the strategy,

Jody? I'm eager to hear. The strategy is to actually control the flow of immigrants crossing the border into Germany.

And remember, John, Germany borders with at least seven countries.

Right.

So this is a big task.

Firstly, secondly, Merz and especially his conservative Bavarian-based party, the Christian Social Union,

promised they would deal with migration.

But attacking these issues on the border is quite short-termism.

The bigger issue is how you deal with immigration coming from North Africa,

coming from Afghanistan, and other countries as well.

And this is getting into the whole area of human rights law, of asylum law, on how you deal with refugees.

But this is something that Merth really wants to tackle because running alongside him nearly is the alternative for

the Deutschland, the far-rightering anti-immigration, anti-Islamist party.

And Merz really has to be practical about this, that Germany cannot host millions of immigrants, and he has to be practical

on how to deal with asylum procedures quickly, and it has to be practical in terms of holding up

the humanitarian and human rights law. And parallel to this is the political aspect that he has to keep ahead of the

AFD and tell his voters that he's trying to get the whole immigration issue under control.

It is just so complicated. But now he's up against the courts and I think he's going to

...