Deportations to Syria have been taboo for more than a decade in which Germany has taken international plaudits for providing shelter to over a million people who fled president Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown against dissidents.

However, even inside Mr Scholz’ centre-Left SPD a consensus is emerging that it is time to reopen channels to the Syrian dictator in order to get rid of the most dangerous criminals who arrived among refugees.

Nils Schmid, the SPD’s foreign affairs spokesman, advocates deporting hardened criminals to Syria. “We won’t get around carrying out technical discussions with the regime in Damascus on issues like deportation,” he said.

Such calls would appear to directly contradict Berlin’s own assessment of the security situation in Syria.

In March the German foreign ministry stated flatly that “a safe return of refugees cannot currently be guaranteed for any region of Syria”.

Another proposal that has raised eyebrows was made by Mr Scholz’s migration commissioner Joachim Stamp, who said that the EU should make use of the detention facilities built in Rwanda for Britain’s now cancelled deportation scheme to the African state.

Berlin’s interior ministry swiftly distanced itself from the comments, saying that Mr Stamp was speaking in his capacity as a politician for the Free Democrats, a junior partner in Mr Scholz’s coalition.

The UK’s Rwanda plan, which the Conservatives dragged on to the statute book through tortuous legal challenges, was ditched in July by the new Labour government after it cost a reported £700 million without a single migrant ever being forcibly expelled to the African country due to repeated legal challenges.

Experts have emphasised that the plans being bandied about in Berlin face similar defeat in the courts unless Berlin can bring about a change to EU law in Brussels, a feat that often involves months of exhausting negotiations.

Matthias Hartwig, an expert on international law at the Max Planck Institute, described all the proposals made in recent days as “problematic”.

Turning people back at the border or deporting migrants to Rwanda would require changes to EU law, while the latter would face a likely legal challenge in the European Court of Human Rights, he pointed out.