A court ruling that Germany could not simply return to Poland three asylum seekers who entered the country in May dealt a blow to the signature migration policy of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's new government: turning illegal migrants back at the borders.

The Berlin administrative court on Monday ruled that the new government's policy of rejecting asylum seekers at the border is incompatible with European Union law. In the urgent decision, the court

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday defended his government's migration crackdown as vital to "protect public safety", a day after a court ruled one of its flagship measures was illegal.