Berlin, 23 January 2025 (dpa/MIA) - German conservative leader Friedrich Merz has demanded fundamental changes to migration policy and a dramatic increase in deportations after the deadly stabbing in the southern city of Aschaffenburg.

Merz, the favourite to become Germany's next chancellor after elections on February 23, said on Thursday that "the limit has finally been reached" following the latest attack, in which a 2-year-old child and a 41-year-old man were killed by an Afghan asylum seeker with a reported history of mental illness.

"We are faced with a shambles of an asylum and immigration policy that has been misguided in Germany for 10 years," said Merz in Berlin, alluding to former chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to enter Germany during the 2015 migrant crisis.

Merz, from the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), said that attacks committed by migrants in German cities including Mannheim, Solingen and Magdeburg in the past year cannot become the "new normality."

If he does become chancellor, Merz pledged to instruct the Interior Ministry to introduce permanent checks on all German borders and turn back all migrants attempting to enter the country, including those who may be entitled to protection.

European Union rules on asylum are dysfunctional, the 69-year-old argued. "Germany must therefore make use of its right to prioritize national law," he added.

Deportations and returns must "take place on a daily basis" and the number must be increased, the CDU leader said.

He also demanded that "every offender and dangerous person who is obliged to leave the country can be placed in indefinite detention pending deportation."

The German government must therefore make more properties available to increase capacity for holding migrants in custody ahead of their deportation, Merz argued.

He said that there are currently only some 750 places for 42,000 people required to leave the country.

Merz asserted that his proposed reforms would be central to any future coalition government.

"Compromises are no longer possible on these issues," he argued.

The comments came after Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday said he was "tired of such acts of violence taking place in [Germany] every few weeks."

MIA file photo