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The states are calling on the federal government to submit the required forecasts on the number of asylum seekers. But the Interior Ministry considers concrete predictions to be “not possible”. Loud WDR and NDR The federal government is considering abolishing the obligation entirely.
When the Prime Ministers meet the Chancellor this week, the question will also be about how the reception of new asylum seekers can best work in this country. What they shouldn’t hope for, however, is that the federal government will provide a forecast as to how many might actually come.
According to research by WDR and NDR The federal government is considering abolishing the legal obligation that requires the federal government to provide the states with a monthly forecast for asylum seekers.
With the help of such a preview of expected developments, states and municipalities should be able to better plan the accommodation and care for which they are responsible. However, the Federal Ministry of the Interior has not presented these forecasts for a long time.
New dispute over migration?
The federal government and the federal states are heading towards a dispute on the subject of migration: in the resolution of the last meeting in November 2023, the states expressly called on the federal government to “regularly provide access forecasts in the future”. It is assumed that the federal government will “shortly return to implementing” the legal obligation, the decision states.
The states are losing patience – because the federal government has not transmitted forecasts for years. As long as the number of asylum seekers was relatively low, the dispute only simmered underground. But in 2023, significantly more asylum seekers arrived again. That’s why the dispute has reignited.
In the federal states they stick to the written forecasts. Schleswig-Holstein’s Integration Ministry, for example, complains that the federal government has not provided a forecast for years. The North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry for Refugees and Integration emphasizes that a lack of forecasts makes the planning of accommodation capacities in the state and also in the municipalities “significantly” more difficult.
Own forecasts
The state would have to step in and create its own analyzes for the municipalities – but as a state one cannot “cover essential aspects such as foreign policy developments or planning at the European level.”
In Saxony, too, the state is trying to step in, as Interior Minister Armin Schuster from the CDU says: “Since the federal government refuses to fulfill its legal obligation in this regard, the Free State of Saxony has to make such a forecast for itself using its own data.”
Last year, the country’s experts were apparently quite good with their numbers. For Schuster, it is therefore clear that “the federal government should be able to do this.” According to Schuster, one must “assume political motives that this is stubbornly refused.”
Criticism from the Union faction
The domestic policy spokesman for the Union faction in the Bundestag, Alexander Throm, clearly criticizes the Interior Ministry: “In this migration crisis, Germany’s Interior Minister believes she can choose which laws she follows and which she doesn’t,” said the CDU politician. Throm says the states and municipalities need this information in order to “be halfway prepared for this crisis.”
However, asylum forecasts that have become public in recent years have repeatedly had consequences in the subsequent discussion. In the political debate, for example, the government was accused of setting such a number of predicted asylum seekers as its own target.
Smugglers in countries of origin, in turn, used figures from asylum forecasts to deceive potential customers into believing that Germany would definitely accept a corresponding number of asylum seekers in a given year. According to information from WDR and NDR This was taken into account in the decision why the Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) stopped the written forecasts.
When asked, a spokesman for the House of Nancy Faeser (SPD) explained that a “reliable and sufficiently concrete” migration forecast was “not possible”. He refers to the “dynamic development of the situation” and “unforeseeable events” such as the earthquake in Turkey and Syria in February 2023.
Interior Ministry: “Need for information of the countries covered”
According to the Interior Ministry, the “states’ need for information” is covered because “other formats” have been established. For example, the federal government transmits the number of asylum applications received every month. Further figures would be made available to states and municipalities via a so-called migration dashboard with up-to-date information.
The ministry spokesman confirmed that the Interior Ministry was considering how to deal with the legal forecast requirement – but there is currently no concrete, i.e. official, legislative process to change the paragraph.
In fact, BAMF President Hans-Eckhard Sommer, for example, regularly provides information about current developments in the so-called Federal-State Conference on Asylum and Return (BLTAR). The BAMF itself had for internal planning last year, according to information from WDR and NDR Various so-called scenarios were also created: The internal maximum scenario for 2023 was initially 320,000 asylum applications. At the end of the year the number was increased again: in fact, around 350,000 asylum applications were counted.
No scenario for 2024 yet?
In the federal states, however, people do not want to be satisfied with this – also because the BAMF is said not to have yet created such a scenario for 2024. The Ministry of the Interior in Brandenburg, for example, explains that the information sources cited by the federal government do not represent “an equally suitable means” to “compensate for the disregarded legal mandate”.
The countries could not have a “comprehensive knowledge picture”. With regard to regular rounds such as the BLTAR, it is said from Brandenburg that the Federal Ministry of the Interior “does not make any forecasts on migration developments” in the legal sense.
A few days ago, BAMF President Sommer was asked about the situation in the Bundestag’s Interior Committee. The additional border controls introduced in the fall ensured a certain degree of stability, said Sommer, according to participants – stable, but at a high level.