Refugees from Ukraine usually receive basic security benefits under the Second Social Code (SGB II). That is more than under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act, accommodation costs are covered and those affected are included in the statutory health insurance funds. Because this places an additional financial burden on municipalities, the federal government has made funds available from sales tax revenue.
According to the Free State of Bavaria, it has already called up 79 million euros, but the municipalities have not yet received a cent of it. In December, the state government first introduced an “amendment to the law for the implementation of social security laws”. The two Greens members of the Landtag from the district of Munich, Claudia Köhler and Markus Büchler, are outraged by this approach. They accuse the state government of deliberately withholding funds to make the federal government look bad.
“Other federal states manage to pass on the funds without an additional law. But bureaucracy as a CSU delaying tactic, we know that from Bavarian integration policy. Companies and helper groups can sing a song about it,” Büchler criticized the state government. According to the Greens, the district of Munich currently has 1,500 people from Ukraine to accommodate, not including the privately living refugees.
In fact, the district of Munich is still waiting for the money. “The law has not yet been passed. Therefore, nothing from this additional relief package can have arrived in the district,” said the district office. So far, the federal government has reimbursed 67.4 percent of the accommodation costs. It is not yet possible to say how much additional money will go to the district of Munich. “We assume that the distribution will be based on the service expenditure of the counties and urban districts for the costs of accommodation and heating for the refugees from Ukraine,” said spokeswoman Christine Spiegel.
In response to a question by Köhler in the plenary session of the state parliament, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) emphasized that “with a view to the refugees from Ukraine in 2022, the Free State of Bavaria made advance payments for the federal government”. may be. The Free State also supports the municipalities massively by tolerating “false occupiers” in state-financed refugee accommodation, especially in the case of Ukraine refugees. But that applies to the time before the war refugees from Ukraine switched to SGB II. From now on, two-thirds of the costs are covered by the federal government, but one-third is to come from the additionally promised federal funds from sales tax. In a letter to Köhler’s colleague in the Munich state parliament, Gülseren Demirel, Herrmann emphasizes that Bavaria will pass on these 79 million euros “in full to the local authorities”.
But that takes time. Because there is no “state-law regulation on forwarding”, as the draft law from December says. Herrmann writes to the Green MP Demirel: “As stated in the law, implementation is only possible if the district-specific data on the financial burdens required to determine a distribution scale is available.” A corresponding special evaluation by the Federal Employment Agency will not be available until the end of April. Claudia Köhler can only shake her head at this: “We consider the argument that there is no legal basis in connection with the Social Security Code to be absurd.”