The Federal Government will not reduce or stop social benefits for Ukrainian refugees. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit rejected a corresponding demand from politicians from the FDP and CDU in Berlin. There are no plans to give Ukrainians who fled the Russian war of aggression reduced benefits under the Asylum Seekers Act instead of the citizen’s allowance, he said.
This is exactly what FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai said in an interview with Picture-Zeitung. Other politicians from the FDP parliamentary group and the Union had previously expressed similar views. Most recently, Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) has demanded the payment of Citizens’ allowance to Ukrainian refugees and argued that the citizen’s allowance had become a “brake on taking up employment”.
Currently around 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany
Since June 2022, Ukrainian refugees in Germany have been receiving basic social security, i.e. the same benefits as those receiving citizen’s allowance. In the months immediately after the start of the war, it was only possible to apply for benefits under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act; these are lower. However, Ukrainians do not have to apply for asylum in Germany, but are accepted under the European Union’s so-called Mass Influx Directive.
Hebestreit said that this regulation was also a “massive relief” for the states and the Federal Office for Migration, which would otherwise have had to examine hundreds of thousands of asylum applications. The repeated extension of the directive was also praised by Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD), said a spokesperson for her ministry. However, she called for better distribution, as a particularly large number of Ukrainians are currently living in Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. There are currently around 1.1 million Ukrainian war refugees in Germany.
According to the ministry, citizen’s allowance enables faster integration into the labour market
A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Labour pointed out that the responsibility of the job centres Refugees from Ukraine could be integrated into the labor market more quickly. The aim of the current regulation is to quickly offer refugees integration services, advice and qualification opportunities, “because we want to get these people into work.” This is not possible through asylum seeker benefits.
The co-leader of the Greens, Omid Nouripour, described the FDP’s initiative as not being effective. He said he was open to discussing measures within the coalition to speed things up so that Ukrainian refugees could be placed in jobs more quickly. “If you want a job boost, then it is certainly not helpful to put people under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act, where they cannot work for the time being,” he added.
According to the employment agency, in March 2024, 185,000 Ukrainians in Germany were in employment subject to social insurance contributions, 127,000 of them only since the beginning of the war. In addition, 47,000 Ukrainians (plus 39,000 since the beginning of the war) were in exclusively marginal employment in March. The spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Labor said that many Ukrainian women were waiting for a childcare place for their children or were attending German courses.