Germany news: Pistorius calls for calm after drone sightings

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he would support a German boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest if Israel happened to be excluded.

Merz was being interviewed on public broadcaster ARD and was asked whether Germany should voluntarily withdraw if the situation came to pass.

"I would support that. I think it's a scandal that this is even being discussed. Israel belongs there," Merz said.

There has been mounting pressure on the contest's organizers to exclude Israel, with several broadcasters from countries including Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands threatening to boycott the 2026 event in Vienna.

They cite Israel's military action in Gaza for any possible boycott.

Representatives from the German Interior Ministry were in Kabul on Sunday for "technical talks" with the Taliban about the repatriation of Afghan criminals.

Germany is seeking a format that will allow it to conduct regular  deportations to Afghanistan. 

Sunday's confirmation followed a Wednesday German public television report on senior officials conducting such talks with the controversial Islamist hardliners.

Germany has no official diplomatic relations with the de facto rulers and has conducted previous deportations of criminal Afghans with the help of intermediaries. 

Speaking with Germany's mass-market daily Bild am Sonntag, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt on Sunday said: "Deportations to Afghanistan must be able to take place regularly! That's why we are now negotiating directly in Kabul, so that criminals and potential threats are consistently deported in the future."

The Taliban returned to power in August 2021 and is infamous for its dismal human rights record, especially when it comes to its unrelenting repression of women and girls.

Germany's new government is seeking a more robust deportation regime, with Interior Ministry officials also looking to seal a deal with Syria for the repatriation of criminals as well as individuals denied asylum.

Since 2022, deportations in Germany have risen from just under 13,000 to over 20,000 per year.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he assumed Russia was behind many of the drones sighted over Germany this weekend.

Drone sightings repeatedly closed Munich's main airport over the weekend, disrupting many flights and leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

"Our assumption is that Russia is behind most of these drone flights," Merz said.

The German leader called the number of incursions in other European countries unprecedented — even compared to during the Cold War.

The sole consolation was that none of the drones spotted so far had been armed, Merz said, adding that they appeared to have been on reconnaissance flights.

Electronic systems for managing passenger check-ins and baggage at Berlin's international airport have gone back online two weeks after a cyberattack on an IT service provider put them out of operation, a spokeswoman has told the DPA news agency.

"From Monday, the airlines will be gradually reconnected to the system" following security tests over the weekend, she said.

She said check-in counters and boarding gates would then also be reconnected in a coordinated reactivation plan.

The cyberattack on the service provider Collins Aerospace on September 19 affected several airports in Europe, with airlines forced to process passengers and their baggage manually with some help from external technology.

Several calls by residents worried about potential gas leakage caused the fire brigade to investigate before finding the smelly cause: a fruit sold at an Asian supermarket.

Read more here 

The 190th Oktoberfest beer festival, thought to be the world's biggest public festival, is to close on Sunday in the southern city of Munich after two weeks of revelry.

 "For me, it was a roller-coaster Wiesn," Munich's economic adviser Christian Scharpf, who headed the festival organization, told the German DPA news agency, using the dialect word for the festival.

 Scharpf said that while record temperatures at the start of the festival had given the event a "dream start," the event had seen a few hitches, with gates having to be closed temporarily on two days amid overcrowding and almost a complete day lost while police searched the venue for a bomb.

However, Scharpf gave a positive assessment overall.

"The super Wiesn atmosphere and the great party mood among the people characterized the festival throughout," he said.

According to estimates by the festival management, 3.5 million guests had attended the event by the halfway point after one week, compared with 3.6 million people last year.

A full tally of visitor numbers is expected on Sunday.

Read more about what Oktoberfest visitors ate, drank and forgot at the Wiesn.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has said that the debate surrounding drone sightings over German airports is unprecedented, making it "all the more important to view the situation soberly and calmly. So far, the observed drones have not posed any concrete threat."

In an interview with the Handelsblatt business newspaper, Pistorius said good progress was being made on drone defense but played down expectations that the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, could be made responsible for shooting down drones wherever they appeared.

"The Bundeswehr cannot be everywhere in Germany where drones appear and bring them down," he said. "Much more crucial is that the state and federal police build the capabilities they need to operate up to a certain altitude."

He also voiced skepticism about plans by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt to establish a drone defense center.

"This center would then only be responsible for a potential threat from drones. However, we must expect that there could be multiple threat scenarios," said Pistorius, mentioning the possibility that forest fires or power outages could occur simultaneously in different parts of Germany.

"Therefore, we primarily need a joint 24/7-360-degree situational awareness."

Pistorius said Russia was trying to create uncertainty with breaches of airspace and drone overflights.

"It's about provoking, instilling fear, and triggering controversial debates. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows Germany very, very well, as we all know. He also knows the German instincts and reflexes," he said.

However, he said that although German intelligence has suggested that Russia will be in a position to attack a NATO country by 2029, "this does not mean that Putin will necessarily take this step."

Pistorius said that while one could hope for the most positive scenario, one "also has to prepare for the worst case."

Einen schönen Guten Tag to all our readers!

DW returns to its reporting on events in and concerning Germany on Sunday, October 5, as mysterious drone sightings continue to concern authorities and the public alike.

On the ground, the famous Oktoberfest in Munich is drawing to a close after a somewhat turbulent second half, including a bomb scare.

We invite you to join us for this roundup of top news from Europe's strongest economy.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindtsaid he wants to create a joint drone defense unit as Germany beefs up its defenses against drones.

"We are in an arms race," said Dobrindt, who hosted a summit of European counterparts in Munich on Saturday. "We want to rise to that challenge."

The interior ministers' meeting was scheduled to discuss migration issues, but dones took over the agenda after multiple drones were recently spotted across Europe, with Munich Airport closed twice in two days over "unconfirmed drone sightings." 

The German interior minister pointed out that an amendment to Germany's constitution, known as the Basic Law, would not be necessary for the Bundeswehr to be able to provide administrative assistance as he had planned.

"We already have capabilities in the federal police, customs, the Federal Criminal Police Office and the state authorities," Dobrindt said.

"However, we want to significantly expand these capabilities and we want to ensure that communication between the federal states and the federal government and the ability to analyze is strengthened," the minister added. 

The interior minister, however, underlined that not every drone is a threat. 

"Many of them, even if they are initiated and controlled by foreign powers, are part of a targeted provocation and not always automatically a threat," said Dobrindt. 

Ethnic Germans who were born in Russia and their descendants are among the most fervent supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The AfD, now the biggest opposition party in the Bundestag, is steadily gaining support.

According to a recent study, 31% of Russia Germans are prepared to vote for the AfD.

Learn more about what makes the anti-immigrant AfD appeal to Russia Germans.

Despite pledging to increase the number of rejected asylum-seekers deported from Germany, the federal government is being forced to cancel deportation flights because deportees increasingly go into hiding before they can be flown out of the country, according to German Federal Police Chief Dieter Romann.

Romann, in comments to be published Sunday in a Welt am Sonntag newspaper interview, said some 33,600 deportations had to be cancelled for that reason last year before police could round up and detain designated deportees. 

Police Chief Romann said many of those individuals had gone into hiding or provided last-minute medical affidavits claiming that they were too ill to travel.

"Unfortunately, that is the reality," said Romann. "Behind each number lies a huge amount of effort. And as long as so many deportations have to be canceled, the gap between those required to leave the country and those who actually do will remain large."

Romann pointed to a lack of detention centers in the country as a major impediment to being able to carry out deportation policy.

"We have 226,000 people required to leave the country but fewer than 800 detention centers," Romann said, adding, that means "state and federal police will continue to be unable to detain individuals when they find them even if the legal requirements for detention are met."

On Saturday, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, who has promised to increase deportations, will convene a meeting of European colleagues to discuss the creation of so-called return centers for those migrants who do not qualify for asylum.

Police in Frankfurt announced the arrest of a 41-year-old man in connection with drones being flown in restricted areas near Frankfurt International Airport.

Authorities say the incident occurred on Friday morning, adding that no flight interruptions took place as the object was quickly commandeered by police.

Police say there is no indication that the man has any ties to Russia — an issue of concern these days as drone sightings across Europe have been linked to Moscow's "hybrid war" against Western nations supporting Ukraine's effort to defend itself against Russian invaders. Russia has denied involvement in the drone sightings.

The arrest in Frankfurt also took place as similar incidents in the city of Munich closed the Bavarian capital's airport twice over the course of 24 hours, stranding thousands of travelers.

Such incidents have fueled talk of the need to improve security at German airports and infrastructure sites.

The operators of Munich Airport say that flight operations restarted at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) after the originally planned restart two hours earlier was delayed as a precautionary measure amid drone sightings.

They warned in a statement, however, that there would be delays to operations throughout the day and requested passengers to view their airlines' websites for further details.

Operations at the airport have been disrupted since drones were sighted nearby on Thursday.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt is set to host a gathering of several of his European counterparts, with return centers for rejected asylum seekers and drone sightings over various countries among the topics discussed.

Interior ministers from Poland, Italy,Luxembourg and Switzerland are expected to attend, as well as migration ministers from Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands, the German Interior Ministry said.

The European commissioner for migration, Magnus Brunner, will also be present at the meeting in Munich, the ministry said. 

Dobrindt told the Munich newspaper Müncher Merkur that among other things, ministers would be discussing ways to establish return centers for people in Europe who have had asylum applications rejected but cannot be returned to their home countries.

The interior minister, who has introduced several hard-line migration policies since taking office, said the EU could not be relied upon to set up such "return hubs" even though the bloc was working on the matter and that individual states should be able to take the initiative.

No final declaration by the ministers is planned, as it is a "working meeting," the ministry said. 

Munich Airport has delayed a planned restart of operations at 5 a.m. local time (0300 UTC) after drone sightings forced a suspension on Friday evening.

A statement said operations would not resume until further notice as a precautionary measure.

Passengers were requested to turn to their airlines for further information.

Both incoming and departing flights were canceled on Friday evening after drones were sighted around the facility.

Some 6,500 passengers were affected by the disruption.