German Green Party lawmaker Pahlke was involved in civilian sea rescues in the Mediterranean. Photo: Kay Nietfeld/dpa
If German lawmaker Julian Pahlke thought the Mediterranean was rough when he was rescuing migrants from sinking boats, he also encountered stormy waters when he entered politics.
Two years after being elected to the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, he handles issues from education to pensions to energy policy as a Green Party lawmaker.
But he's most passionate about migration – an emotive issue at present – having witnessed tragic sea crossings by those fleeing war and natural disaster and seeking a better life.
Pahlke tries to share with other politicians some of these distressing scenes.
"We tried to save those who could be saved and we had to make the decision to leave hundreds behind," he told the house in a recent speech. "I can tell you: the smell of a floating corpse will stay with me all my life... That is the reality of fleeing in all its harshness."
Politics "must always remain capable of empathy", he said, as he was heckled by members of the far-right Alternative for Germany, which opposes migration.
And when the young MP recalls troubling episodes in Germany's post-reunification history, like the arson attacks on refugee centres in 1992, he is taunted with barbs like "You weren't even born then!"
He doesn't let the criticism get to him. Two years since entering parliament, Pahlke does feel he can make a difference, in recent weeks especially, as the pictures of the migrant chaos on the Italian island of Lampedusa are shared worldwide.
Migrants rescued from a dinghy in the Mediterranean Sea disembark from a Spanish rescue vessel after reaching the Port of Malaga. Photo: Jesus Merida/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
"The pictures from Lampedusa really only prove again that the European asylum system is dysfunctional," he says.
The Italians were right when they complained that the European distribution of refugees still does not work and that the current system places a particularly heavy burden on some states, he says.
Pahlke did not rise up through the ranks of the Green Party, having only joined the party in 2019. He worked in an advertising agency after graduating from college.
His first taste of life as an MP came in 2020-2021, when he worked as parliamentary assistant to now-Culture Minister Claudia Roth, who was vice-president of the Bundestag at the time.
Of his experiences in the Mediterranean in his mid-20s, Pahlke says he always had a passion for sailing, so it seemed logical to volunteer during the migrant crisis.
"I originally wanted to go to sea for three weeks and just help out on the ship," he says of his first rescue mission.
But he soon saw the urgency of the situation and joined a rescue organisation as a board member.
A photo on his office wall recalls that time. The image, taken from a plane, shows a small ship and several inflatable boats.
"That's where I was," says Pahlke, pointing to one of the vessels.
The work took its toll, particularly the day there was not space to take all the people who needed rescuing on board. He took a four-year break after that and stopped going out to sea.
He now sits on two Bundestag committees, dealing with migration, refugees and displaced persons, and migrant smuggling and people trafficking. He receives a lot of hate mail, like many others who focus on the issue, but finds the work rewarding, too.
A recent success was ensuring German funding for sea rescues, during budget negotiations, he says, though Italy expressed "astonishment".
He and other lawmakers also wrote an intergroup letter to the Italian parliament, stating "that we consider the legislation there, namely to punish civilian rescue ships if they carry out more than one rescue, to be highly problematic".
Rome decreed that rescue ships must sail directly to allocated ports after picking up migrants, rather than carrying out further rescues if they hear of other vessels in distress.
But with Germany's political parties and states wrangling over a unified approach to migration, uncertainty looms for support for sea rescue efforts going forward.
This year's budget allocation for sea rescue and projects on land for those rescued is the equivalent of around US$2mil (RM9.4mil). Provisional plans for the next three years, with expenditure totalling around US$6mil (RM28mil), are non-binding and could still be changed in budget negotiations.
But Rome considers German government support for aid organisations that look after migrants on Italian soil to be interference in its domestic affairs.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently distanced himself from the continued funding during a press conference after an informal EU summit. Scholz said the funds had been approved by the Bundestag and not by the government.
Given these uncertainties, Pahlke and other politicians are likely to be heavily involved in future deliberations about migration both to Germany and across the EU. – dpa
