Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) issued a landmark ruling on 24 July 2026 that overturns the Interior Ministry’s blanket suspension of admission promises for at-risk Afghans. In a case brought by an Afghan mother and her two children, the Court found that the so-called “Abkehrerklärung”—Berlin’s December 2025 decision to revoke earlier commitments—violated the constitutional prohibition of arbitrary state action. The judges stressed that although the government enjoys wide political discretion in humanitarian admissions under §§22-23 of the Residence Act, it is never “completely free” in a rule-of-law state; the rights and legitimate expectations of each individual must be weighed. The decision forces the Higher Administrative Court to re-examine the family’s file and, by extension, sets a precedent for roughly 400 similar complaints filed by the civil-rights NGO Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF). Background: After the Taliban takeover in 2021, Germany created several programmes—including an ad-hoc “human-rights list”—to evacuate Afghans who had worked with German institutions. In May 2025 the new coalition government froze the programmes, citing security and capacity concerns, and in December revoked all outstanding approvals. Many applicants have since been stranded in third-country safe houses in Pakistan. Practical implications: • Embassies and foreigners’ authorities (Ausländerbehörden) must be prepared for a wave of reopened cases and possible court-ordered visas. • Employers sponsoring Afghan specialists under the Skilled Immigration Act should expect faster humanitarian decisions, but also additional document requests. • The ruling adds pressure on the Interior Ministry as Parliament finalises the 2026 amendments to Germany’s migration law. For multinational companies it means that staff evacuation or family-reunification petitions that were on hold may now proceed, but processing timelines remain uncertain until administrative guidelines are updated.
Source: ZDFheute
