The federal government is under increasing pressure to provide state and local governments with further support in accommodating refugees. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) warned in a letter to Interior Minister Nancy Faeser that “states and municipalities will soon have reached the limits of their resilience”.
Further support from the federal government is necessary in view of the unchanged high number of refugees from Ukraine and other countries, the letter goes on to say, about which the “Welt am Sonntag” reported.
Wüst complains that the real estate provided by the federal government for refugee accommodation is often in an unusable condition. Therefore, Faeser should influence the responsible authorities so that the “provision of actually usable capacities” is initiated. In addition, the Prime Minister is demanding that federal funds that have already been promised should finally flow.
Counties, towns and communities are finding themselves increasingly in a tense situation when it comes to accommodating refugees. More than a million refugees from Ukraine were registered in Germany last year.
In addition, 217,774 people from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan made an initial application for asylum last year. As the “Bild” newspaper reported, citing statistics from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, accommodation for asylum seekers in Germany is currently 64 percent full.
The parliamentary director of the Union faction, Thorsten Frei, told the Tagesspiegel that around 30,000 asylum applications per month had recently been made in Germany. “The limit in Germany has been reached,” said Frei.
Interior Minister Faeser “did nothing in the past year to limit asylum migration,” criticized the CDU politician. Instead, the federal government’s refugee policy gave the impression: “Anyone who has made it to Germany no longer has to leave the country.”
Frei demanded that Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) have to talk to the federal states at a refugee summit about “limiting asylum migration and finding a solution for distribution, care and accommodation”. “But such a summit cannot just be about distributing the costs of reception and accommodation. We must finally talk about effective measures to limit asylum migration,” he added.
Migration researcher Gerald Knaus pointed out that by far the largest group of refugees to be accommodated are currently Ukrainians. “The greatest direct relief for municipalities would be more private admissions, including in European countries that have so far taken in few Ukrainians, such as France, Italy, Spain,” he said.
It would also be in the interests of Ukrainian women to be admitted privately in France instead of being accommodated in halls in Berlin.
Gerald Knaus, migration researcher
“It would also be in the interests of Ukrainian women to be admitted privately in France instead of being accommodated in halls in Berlin,” Knaus continued. To this end, a joint initiative by Germany, France and the EU is desirable.
Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) had previously demanded that the federal government invite city and district representatives to a municipal summit. Söder also asked Faeser to manage migration policy more effectively and to support municipalities across the country much more than before.
According to the new special representative for migration agreements, Joachim Stamp (FDP), the federal government wants to examine the transfer of asylum procedures to Africa. “Then people rescued on the Mediterranean would be taken to North Africa for their procedures,” Stamp told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.
To home page
Source: Tagesspiegel
I have been working in the news website industry for over 4 years now, first as a reporter and then as an editor. I enjoy writing about politics news and am also an author. I try to cover a lot of different angles when it comes to my articles so that readers can get a well-rounded understanding of the story.
