Status: 10/26/2022 11:57 am
Germany has responded to pressure from the European Court of Justice: According to reports, applications for family reunification should be processed more quickly. Authorities are instructed to process visa applications from young people more quickly.
The federal government wants to make it easier for children, young people and parents who are fleeing to join them. This is intended to implement the requirements of several judgments by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on family reunification “as quickly as possible”.
At the beginning of September, the Federal Foreign Office instructed its diplomatic missions abroad to “prioritize applications for parental reunification that have been pending as far as possible,” according to a response from the federal government to a request from the left-wing faction. So the “already long processing time” should not be extended any further. The newspapers of the Funke media group first reported on this, the text is also available to the dpa news agency.
Processing should be expanded
“A separate department for family reunification” is currently being set up in the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs (BfAA) “in order to expand the processing of family reunification for persons entitled to protection,” it said.
At the beginning of August, the ECJ criticized the practice of the German authorities for family reunification as unlawful. According to this, under-age unaccompanied refugees may, under certain conditions, bring their families to Germany even if they come of age during the procedure. The same applies to children or young people who have come of age and wish to join their parents who are recognized as refugees in Germany.
In cases that have now been “clearly” clarified by the court, the foreign office wants to “issue the visas that have been in dispute up to now”. Around 330 administrative procedures are pending at the diplomatic missions, for the outcome of which case law is relevant. “The same applies to around 250 other disputes that are pending before the judiciary.” The federal government is “currently still in discussion” on “remaining legal questions about the interpretation and implementation of the ECJ decisions”.
Asylum procedures last eight months
According to the information, authorities process asylum procedures for minors and unaccompanied refugees for more than eight months on average. When these young people apply for asylum, they are on average 15 years old. Since 2018, more than 15,000 minors who were initially rejected in court have been granted protection in Germany.
The flight policy spokeswoman for the left, Clara Bünger, welcomed the steps that the government has now taken. However, the damage already done by “the federal government’s long-term refusal” is immense, she told the Funke newspapers. “Unaccompanied refugee children in need of protection were unlawfully separated from their parents for years, and parents were denied the right to bring their children with them.” She called for “some form of damages or compensation for the human rights violations suffered”.