Problems with accommodation: refugee summit in February

According to their own statements, states and municipalities often hardly manage to accommodate refugees. Federal Interior Minister Faeser therefore invites you to the summit in Berlin. But the call to make the topic a top priority is getting louder.

For several weeks now, the federal states and local authorities have been drawing attention to problems with the accommodation of refugees. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has now announced a summit meeting in her ministry. The spokesman for your ministry, Maximilian Kall, said that the talks with representatives of the municipal umbrella organizations and the conference of interior ministers should take place within the next two to three weeks – i.e. in February.

fiber said opposite ARD Capital Studio: “We last met in November at the federal level – and I will now invite you to another refugee summit.” It’s about looking again directly with the municipalities to see what can be done, according to the SPD politician.

“Refugee policy must be a top priority”

However, the German District Association wants Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) to take care of limiting irregular migration and the problems of caring for refugees himself. The Prime Minister of Hesse, Boris Rhein, called for Report from Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz must “make the issue a top priority now”. He has the impression that the federal government has not yet realized the difficult situation in which the federal states and local authorities are.

At the last summit meeting, Minister Faeser offered additional federal real estate for the accommodation of refugees. Your spokesman has now said that the federal government has so far provided accommodation for almost 70,000 people. About 64 percent of this is currently being used.

At a prime ministerial conference in early November, decisions were then made on further financial issues. The federal government provided an additional 1.5 billion euros for the care of refugees from Ukraine, among other places, in 2022. Two billion euros had previously been pledged specifically for taking in war refugees from Ukraine.

Union demands more consistent asylum policy

The Union has criticized the current handling of refugees: The deputy chairwoman of the Union faction, Andrea Lindholz (CSU), demanded in the joint morning magazine ARD and ZDF also “a larger refugee summit in the chancellery”. Many municipalities no longer have the capacity to take in more asylum seekers. The CSU politician called for incentives that caused an additional flow of refugees to be removed.

MP Clara Bünger (left), on the other hand, said that the municipalities primarily need support. Whether the meeting takes place in the Chancellery or at Faeser’s is irrelevant. Bünger suggested “questioning the rigid distribution and accommodation system for asylum seekers” and instead paying more attention to the social networks and needs of the refugees.

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 applied 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.