The German Cabinet on Wednesday approved several measures to tighten Germany’s asylum laws, including a plan to make it easier to determine “safe countries of origin” and thus to deport rejected asylum-seekers.

This comes after another policy put in place by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt — allowing police to send back asylum-seekers at the border without assessment of their cases according to the Dublin procedure — was deemed unlawful by the Administrative Court in Berlin.

What did the Cabinet decide?

Dobrindt, a conservative politician from the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), would like to see the government made solely responsible in the future for deciding which countries should be categorized as “safe countries of origin.”

Under his plan, no approval from Germany’s upper house of parliament, or Bundesrat, which represents the 16 federal states, would be required anymore to decide whether there is persecution in a country that would justify granting asylum to people from there.

This would reduce the number of people eligible for asylum and make it easier to deport rejected asylum-seekers to their home countries if these were put in the “safe” category.

The Cabinet also approved the abolition of a rule calling for people in pre-deportation custody to be automatically be assigned a lawyer by the state.

This rule was adopted under the previous left-leaning Social Democrat-led coalition government at the behest of the environmentalist Green Party.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Dobrindt said, “These are essential steps that are part of a whole raft of measures to bring about the asylum transformation.”

The reforms approved by the Cabinet, which are all conta