The next migration summit is scheduled for Wednesday.
The signs point to Zoff.
The countries want more money.
Allegations come from Berlin.
Berlin - Before the migration summit in the Chancellery, the federal states are demanding more money from Christian Lindner's budget for the care of refugees and migrants.
"Next week I will work to ensure that the federal government also makes a contribution," said Brandenburg's state leader Dietmar Woidke (SPD) of the
Märkische Oderzeitung
.
One is in talks about the sum.
"Significantly more funds must flow for accommodation, care and, above all, integration - and permanently," demanded NRW Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) in Der
Spiegel
.
CSU boss Markus Söder said on Saturday at the CSU party conference: "More money is needed, better accommodation is needed, and there is no need for Germans to go it alone in the admission process.
If the traffic light lets the municipalities starve at the outstretched arm, then that divides the country.”
Escape to Germany: There is a risk of a dispute at the Scholz summit – have the countries not done their "homework"?
But before the appointment on Wednesday (May 10th), the main threat is a dispute.
The federal government made up of SPD, Greens and FDP has so far strictly rejected renewed demands for money from the federal states.
The traffic light coalition emphasizes that according to the constitution, the federal states are responsible.
Nevertheless, in recent years the federal government has voluntarily helped the states and municipalities with billions in payments.
There are also accusations that a number of state governments have not passed on the multi-billion dollar federal grants for refugee care and accommodation to the local authorities.
This also applies to Bavaria, as reported by
Merkur.de
in March.
According to government circles, many of the 16 federal states have not done their homework either in deporting rejected asylum seekers or in digitizing the immigration authorities.
The background to the debate is the sharp increase in the number of arrivals of refugees and migrants.
Escape summit at Scholz: Traffic light raises internal allegations - "Costs a billion every time"
It was not until 2022 that the federal government assumed most of the costs for caring for the approximately one million Ukrainian war refugees from the federal states, as Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) emphasized in the Bundestag.
Berlin also points to the surpluses in the budgets of most federal states and many municipalities and massive deficits in the federal budget.
The federal government is therefore also warning of a failure of the federal-state meeting on Wednesday.
Migration: How many people came to Germany in 2023?
According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 101,981 initial applications for asylum were made in Germany in the first four months of the year.
That was 78 percent more than in the same period last year.
If this development were to continue, more than 300,000 asylum applications would be possible this year - after 218,000 initial applications last year.
These people have to be housed in the communities - alongside the roughly one million refugees from Ukraine.
Talks had already failed in February - to the displeasure of many district administrators.
It really seems questionable that things will go better this time.
Money is "not the focus of the meeting," said Deputy Government Spokesman Wolfgang Büchner on Friday (May 5).
It's about "challenges that cannot primarily be solved with money".
A sentence that is often quoted in Berlin about meetings with the federal states is that these cost the federal government at least one billion euros each time.
The municipalities are not even invited to the event.
Green turnaround in asylum?
Nouripour suggests a compromise on "safe countries of origin".
Like SPD leader Lars Klingbeil before him, the Federal Government's special representative for migration, Joachim Stamp (FDP), called for the list of so-called safe countries of origin to be expanded.
"I propose that comprehensive migration partnerships be launched very quickly with Georgia and the Republic of Moldova," said the FDP politician to Der
Spiegel
.
It should then also be clarified that deported Georgians and Moldovans must submit appeals against rejected asylum applications from their homeland.
With the classification of EU accession aspirants as “safe countries of origin”, asylum procedures for applicants from these countries could be accelerated due to a very low recognition rate.
Angela Merkel's GroKo already wanted Moldova and Georgia to be classified in this way, but the federal states in the Bundesrat, which were co-governed by the Greens, prevented this.
This could change now.
According to a report by the taz
, Green leader Omid Nouripour recently said
that his party was not willing to change the status of the Maghreb states of Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.
However, the situation is different for "EU accession candidates who implement extensive reforms in the rule of law and human rights".
At least Moldova is one of the accession candidates.
(
rtr/fn/AFP
)
Rubric list image: © John Macdougall/AFP