Hesse’s Minister-President, Boris Rhein, has called for a nationwide “integration obligation” in the style of Hesse’s model. “We demand that someone who wants to live in our country permanently also speaks our language, not in fragments, but so that they can participate in social life” he told Ippen-Media.
He also emphasized that those who come to Germany must acknowledge what is important to the country, including a commitment to combating anti-Semitism and recognizing Israel’s right to exist. “Someone who, for example, demands the caliphate and actively promotes it cannot stay here” he said. “Integration is, first and foremost, a duty of those who come to us and not a duty of the state and its citizens. We will clearly demand this duty more explicitly.”
Rhein was asked if he would push for this on a federal level and he replied, “Yes.” In the Hesse coalition agreement, it was announced that the integration law would be revised, with concrete obligations to be included. The agreement mentions, among other things, the mastery of the German language, as well as sufficient knowledge of the country’s legal and social system and its history.
When asked if he would, like Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder, rule out a coalition with the Greens on a federal level after the Bundestag election, Rhein said, “As the Hesse Minister-President, I can only say that everything we achieved in the first year of our new Christian-Social coalition would not have been possible with the Greens.”
He also stated that the Green Party’s history is, for the time being, at an end and that a coalition with the Greens is currently not possible in many areas due to a lack of real politics. Additionally, he criticized the Greens for being in the midst of a credibility crisis, citing the “Doppelmoral-Affäre” in Berlin and a party financing scandal in Hesse. Prior to the coalition with the SPD, which has been in place for around a year, the CDU in Hesse governed for a decade with the Greens. Söder had already ruled out a coalition with the Greens on a federal level after the Bundestag election earlier this year.