Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz and parliamentary group interior expert Alexander Throm have accused Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) of inaction in view of the problems in the municipalities with the accommodation of migrants.
“Chancellor Scholz has still not heard a word about the migration crisis, but for the CDU/CSU the issue has long been a top priority,” said Trom (CDU), who is the domestic policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, to the German Press Agency in Berlin Berlin. Merz, who is also head of the CDU, told the “Bild” newspaper that the chancellor’s “indifference” was “negligent”: “Scholz’s behavior shakes the trust of the European partners in Germany.”
At the municipal summit of the group this Thursday (5 p.m.), those responsible from municipalities, cities and districts should be the focus, as Throm explained.
Union faction pulls together
The leaders of the Union faction also want to discuss measures to control and limit irregular migration with local representatives. According to the parliamentary group, Germany can only meet its humanitarian responsibility towards those in need of protection if this exists. A federal-state summit with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) on refugee costs is planned for May 10th.
“We will no longer stand by and let the cries for help from the municipalities go unheeded in this crisis,” Throm announced. The Union faction is pulling together “to alleviate the distress of the municipalities”, Union faction leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) in the first place.
Those responsible from the municipalities and districts must also “find the hearing that the traffic light apparently does not want to grant them” in the Bundestag. According to Throm, after the discussion with the local representatives in the Bundestag, the Union faction wants to submit an application that builds on the experiences and needs of the cities, municipalities and districts.
Merz: Recording capacity largely exhausted
The head of the Union faction has invited cross-party district administrators and mayors to Berlin to discuss problems with the accommodation of migrants.
“The capacity of German cities and communities is largely exhausted,” Merz said on Tuesday. According to information from the Union faction, almost 400 local politicians want to come to the event. The municipalities are demanding a long-term strategy for taking in refugees from the federal and state governments.
According to Merz, 244,000 asylum applications were made in Germany last year. In the current year there are already 30,000 immigrants to Germany every month, mostly refugees and asylum seekers. Only a small part of this comes from the Ukraine, the larger part from the Near and Middle East.
The federal chairman of the local political association of the CDU and CSU, Christian Haase, said that after Germany took in more than a million war refugees from Ukraine in 2022, more and more people from Syria and Afghanistan were again looking for protection in Germany.
It’s missing in many places
In many places there is a lack of accommodation, but also of medical care, daycare and school places and integration courses. Scholz failed to “find pragmatic solutions in the short term in exchange with those responsible from the municipalities and the representatives of the central associations in order to ease the situation on site”.
The North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) demanded in the “Handelsblatt” that the federal government must “clearly acknowledge its responsibility, especially when it comes to the fair distribution of costs”. His Hessian colleague Boris Rhein (CDU) called for “a real repatriation offensive”.
According to SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, the migration policy challenges, such as the lack of housing, are clear to everyone. “For this reason, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has long since initiated an orderly procedure. This involves, among other things, the mobilization of federal properties, but also the digitization of processes in the municipalities,” he told the editorial network Germany.
Union demands federal agency for immigration
In an eleven-page position paper entitled “For Humanity and Order in Asylum and Refugee Policy,” the Union faction calls, among other things, for the immigration of foreign skilled workers to be newly regulated with a separate federal agency for immigration. The skilled workers should thus receive “service from a single source”, from finding a job, checking the requirements for entry, through the necessary visa to the residence permit after arrival in Germany.
Traffic light government plans
The traffic light coalition wants to fill the growing gap in skilled workers with many more workers from abroad. Unlike today, more non-EU citizens should be allowed to enter the country without a recognized qualification.
Selection criteria should be professional experience or a connection to Germany. There has been a Skilled Immigration Act since 2020. Skilled workers with foreign vocational training are given the right to stay in Germany for six months to look for a job.
