migration
Union faction leadership demands refugee summit with Scholz
CDU politician Thorsten Frei calls for a summit that shouldn’t just be about distributing the costs of taking in and accommodating refugees. photo
© Soeren Stache/dpa
States and municipalities complain about the refugee accommodation and feel overwhelmed. The demand for a debate on “limiting asylum migration” is getting louder.
In view of the increasing problems with the accommodation of refugees, the head of the Union faction has called for a summit between Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and the federal states.
The parliamentary director of the Union in the Bundestag, Thorsten Frei (CDU), told the “Tagesspiegel am Sonntag” that there had to be talks about “limiting asylum migration and a solution for distribution, care and accommodation”. “But such a summit cannot just be about distributing the costs of admission and accommodation. We must finally talk about effective measures to limit asylum migration,” he said.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) and other state and local government officials had previously warned that the number of refugees would be overburdened. Promised funds from the federal government must finally flow, further help is needed, Wüst demanded according to “Welt am Sonntag” in a letter to Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD).
In Germany, more people applied for asylum last year than at any time since 2016. According to annual statistics from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, almost 218,000 people made such a request for protection in Germany for the first time. That was almost 47 percent more than in 2021. The approximately one million war refugees from Ukraine who were admitted to Germany last year did not have to apply for asylum. You receive immediate temporary protection on the basis of an EU directive.