The date has been fixed for weeks. When the prime ministers of the federal states meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) for the refugee summit this Wednesday, expectations are high.
In the population, but also in the communities that are groaning under the influx of refugees. First and foremost it should be about the money. But the problems in migration policy are much bigger – and cannot be solved in Germany alone. An overview.
Pay: In 2017, the CDU and CSU agreed on an upper limit for refugees of 200,000. This is primarily a political number, there are hardly any rejections at the border. However, the number is remembered as a measure of feasibility. In 2022, the number of asylum applications was already higher. Now she has risen again. In the first four months of 2023, the number was almost 80 percent higher than in the same period of the previous year, the states emphasize.
All in all, according to estimates by the domestic political spokesman for the Union faction Alexander Throm, there could be a total of 300,000 asylum applications this year. Migration experts consider this to be entirely plausible. Then there are the refugees from Ukraine, triggered by Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression. The sheer number poses a challenge for the Federal Republic: there is a lack of apartments, there are no German courses, there are no daycare places – and it is a financial problem.
finance: The states, municipalities and the federal government are currently arguing about who has to bear the greater financial burden. The federal government pays the federal states a total of 1.5 billion euros for refugees from Ukraine. There is also a lump sum of 1.25 billion euros for third-country nationals.
The federal states not only want more money, they also want to go back to the flat rate for individual cases that existed until recently. Then the amount of the payments would again depend on the number of asylum seekers – a “breathing system”. However, the federal government is not prepared to do this – the financial leeway has shrunk significantly due to the tight budgetary situation.
protection of external borders: The countries also insist on better control and limitation of migration. Germany cannot do this on its own. Negotiations on a “common European asylum system” are currently taking place at EU level. The decision proposed by the Federal Chancellery states that the federal government is “advocating for mandatory border procedures at the EU’s external borders for certain people”.
In contrast, there is resistance in the traffic light parties Greens and SPD. The SPD domestic politician Hakan Demir told the Tagesspiegel that “mandatory external border procedures make it difficult to comply with binding human rights standards”. But the FDP is in favor of the proposal. “We must effectively control Europe’s external borders,” said FDP domestic politician Stephan Thomae.
Within the Schengen area, border controls should actually be the exception. But according to the proposed resolution, there should be “manhunts with veils at all German internal borders” due to the current dynamics.
Distribution of refugees within Europe: The Federal Government is committed to ensuring that there is a mandatory solidarity mechanism within the EU for the distribution of refugees. So far, all attempts to introduce such a system have failed. This is mainly due to the Eastern European countries, which reject a mandatory distribution.
The federal government continues to rely on compliance with the so-called “Dublin III Regulation”, which stipulates that only the state in which an asylum seeker first applied for asylum is responsible for carrying out the procedure. However, many migration experts see the regulation as a failure.
returns: Anyone who is not recognized as a refugee in Germany is still not deported in most cases. The recognition rate for asylum seekers is around 50 percent. But only 13,000 people were deported in 2022. The reasons for this are diverse. One of the problems is that many countries of origin do not take back their nationals. The federal government now wants to increasingly conclude agreements with countries of origin.
A special representative for migration was specially appointed for this purpose: Joachim Stamp from the FDP. But with countries like Afghanistan or Syria it will be difficult because of the security situation. Nancy Faeser (SPD) had announced that she wanted to examine deportations there as well. But that is not considered realistic.
The federal government now wants to at least expand the list of safe countries of origin, which would make it easier to reject rejected asylum seekers. Georgia and Moldova are under discussion. Stamp is in talks with these states about migration partnerships.
