No sentence has been heard more often in Germany in the past week than the one that something must be done about migration. For many people and for a whole series of parties, it follows that the measures proposed by the chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz, including strict control of inner-European borders, belong in the catalogue of measures available to a German government. This is a serious mistake. This mistake is much more important than the fact that the CDU’s motion was supported by the AfD. The AfD is a child of this fundamental German mistake.

There are problems in this world that the government of a nation state can easily solve. But there are questions that, by their very nature, can never be answered by one state alone, but only in cooperation with other nations. Migration is one of them.

Of course, as a nation you can completely disconnect from the rest of the world, close all borders and end all other exchanges with the rest of the world. Then you are self-sufficient. Not even the right-wingers from the AfD demand that. But even then, a country is exposed to a range of influences from the rest of the world, has to endure climate change without a say in the matter, and can do nothing about a neighbouring country building one coal-fired power plant after another on its border, polluting the air of the seemingly self-sufficient nation, or continuing to operate nuclear power plants near the border whose safety standards do not meet the expectations and needs of its population.

Those who decide to cooperate because they believe that it will also benefit them must be willing to compromise with their neighbours. Now, the fact is that in Europe, where there is a commitment to close cooperation for good reasons, the migration flows encounter a geographical entity that is by no means uniform. Naturally, there are countries that are on the outside when viewed from the direction of the migration flows (let’s call them border countries) and others that are on the inside (let’s call them landlocked countries). Greece, Spain and Italy are the typical border countries, while Germany and Austria are clearly landlocked.

Almost always, the migration flows first hit the border countries, without this implying that the migrants want to go to the border countries; they simply want to go to the European Union, perhaps to Germany or France. Nevertheless, the border countries bear a much greater burden from the outset than the landlocked countries. If a regulation is adopted (as was once the case in Dublin) under which migrants can be turned away in the landlocked countries if they come from a safe third country, this is obviously not a fair agreement for the border countries.

Because all countries perceive migration as a major burden, arrangements are needed between the border and landlocked countries to prevent the border countries from bearing the entire burden alone. Mind you, this applies if you want to maintain the other cooperation agreements, such as open borders for goods and people in the EU. Such regulations exist in the form of the ‘reform of the European asylum system’, which must be implemented in national law by 2026. Olaf Scholz made that clear in his otherwise very good speech last Wednesday.

In this respect, there is nothing that can be done at the national level alone in terms of border control to manage migration in a cooperation model that we have voluntarily committed ourselves to within the framework of the EU. Those who nevertheless want to make rapid changes can, if they are in government, go to Brussels and ask the other countries to start new negotiations. That is not a promising approach.

To control national borders in order to turn away anyone who might potentially seek asylum, as Friedrich Merz wants, is a primitive throwback to the Dublin Regulations, which have been unequivocally rejected by our European partners. If Germany turns back asylum seekers to Austria and Austria in turn to Italy, we will be back to the absurd situation of a one-sided burden on the border countries, which can never be sustained if Germany, in other respects, specifically in foreign trade, wants to work together with the border countries and also profit from it.

There has been much talk of European law in the past few days. However, the violation of European reason associated with the CDU’s five-point proposal is much more important. Those who vote in favour of such a proposal have not understood how countries can solve problems in a cooperative way and how they cannot. National solo efforts along the lines of ‘We can do it because we’re big and strong’ are a throwback to the days of gunboat diplomacy, which Europe should have left behind once and for all – not only legally, but also politically and from a human point of view.

It is regrettable that in Germany, of all places, there is no longer any understanding of such issues among significant sections of the population and leading politicians. The urge to find national and nationalist solutions is overwhelming. Instead of calmly explaining the situation and the European options to the population, there are too many gamblers around who, apparently unaware of what they are doing, give the impression that they have found the patent solution. When this happens in the famous political centre, this centre immediately does the business of those who fish in troubled waters on the right-wing fringe.

If you want to solve the problem of large migration flows, you have to look at the bigger picture. You have to prevent wars and give developing countries a real chance to catch up economically. This also means saying goodbye to many ideas that are widespread in the West. In particular, the hope that you can do business with developing countries to your own advantage, keeping them down as competitors while solving their development problems, is a grandiose illusion.

Those who demand success in the competition between nations as business locations without considering that this always implies disadvantages for other countries as business locations cannot expect the people in the disadvantaged countries to simply accept it. Those who are pleased about large surpluses in foreign trade are destroying jobs elsewhere and driving the redundant workers to seek secure conditions. Trade is also about cooperation and not confrontation.

We also need to finally realise that it is the Western institutions in Washington that are doing more damage in most regions of the world with their neoliberal policies than the West could ever make up for with development aid. Development aid could be dispensed with altogether if a global financial order were established that does not serve the speculative interests of Wall Street and the City of London. It is more than doubtful that those who complain most loudly about migration would even have concepts for meaningful changes in this area, let alone be willing to implement them.