The preliminary agreement in Germany between the federal and state governments on a new burden sharing for refugee costs has met with mixed reactions. Municipalities as well as the opposition are fiercely critical. The refugee organization Pro Asyl was “shocked”.
The German Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, welcomed the result: “This package of measures reflects exactly the basic principles of our refugee policy: We protect people who have fled war and terror. In order to continue to be able to do this, we limit irregular migration.”
According to the agreement, the federal government will pay one billion euros more for the states and municipalities for 2023 due to the increased number of refugees. A fundamental decision on permanently higher federal funds for financing the accommodation and care of those seeking protection was postponed. In November, a regular conference of prime ministers is to discuss how the system can be further developed in the longer term.
“Big disappointment”
The municipalities described the result as a “great disappointment”. An agreement in November on the future breakdown of costs is clearly too late. Municipal representatives were not invited to the meeting. The billion is “just a drop in the bucket”, criticized the general manager of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, Gerd Landsberg.
After the refugee summit in the Chancellery, the refugee organization Pro Asyl sharply criticized the fact that the federal and state governments wanted to campaign for asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders. Pro Asyl was “shocked that the summit led to a financial agreement at the expense of the human rights of people fleeing,” said Pro Asyl’s legal policy spokeswoman, Wiebke Judith, to the newspapers of the Funke media group (Thursday editions).
The parliamentary group leader of the Left in the Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch, called the round in the Chancellery in an interview with the editorial network Germany (RND) a “disappointment summit”. The chairmen of the AfD parliamentary group, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, described the results as “not suitable for initiating the urgently needed migration turnaround in Germany. Even more money for even more refugees will not solve the refugee crisis, it will prolong it.”
