Germany should consider leaving the European Convention on Human Rights if it cannot drive wholesale reform of Europe’s asylum system, Jens Spahn, one of the country’s most prominent conservative politicians, has said.
The centre-right Christian Democratic Union, which holds a sizeable lead in the polls before a snap election in February, has put a hardening of migration policy at the heart of its pitch to the electorate.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and frontrunner for the chancellorship, has vowed to declare a national emergency so that a much greater number of asylum seekers can be turned back at the borders.
In an interview with The Times, Spahn, a CDU grandee and former minister who is expected to return to the
