Hesse’s Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) called for concrete commitments from the federal government for the municipalities before the refugee summit with Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). Access to Germany has increased significantly in recent weeks, Beuth told the German Press Agency in Wiesbaden.
It is less about refugees from Ukraine, but more about migration from the Near and Middle East. The Hessian municipalities have also signaled that they are now reaching the limits of their capacity.
“The interior minister has announced quite a few things, but nothing has happened so far,” criticized the CDU politician. “The federal government has a central coordination function here, of which there is still no sign.” He therefore expects from the meeting that the Federal Minister of the Interior will make concrete commitments to the municipalities. “The question of costs must finally be clarified. The federal government had already announced cost sharing in April. Now this announcement must finally be followed by action.” In addition, there must be a well-founded picture of the situation and coordination of access events.
Nationwide control and distribution
Faeser and representatives of cities, municipalities and districts are coming together in Berlin today for a top-level meeting on the subject of refugees. The consultations should deal with nationwide control and distribution as well as accommodation. Afterwards, the SPD politician wants to inform about the results of the meeting together with the chairman of the conference of interior ministers, the Bavarian Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU), and the vice-president of the German Association of Cities and Leipzig Mayor, Burkhard Jung.
In addition to the German Association of Cities, the German Association of Cities and Municipalities, the German District Association, Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius as a representative of the SPD-led countries and the Hessian Interior Minister Beuth as a representative of the Union-led countries will also take part in the meeting.
Bavaria’s Minister of the Interior, Joachim Herrmann, criticized the federal government before the refugee summit: He found it incomprehensible “that the federal government should start additional voluntary admission programs for refugees at a time when the number of refugees is already high, or with improvements in services for asylum seekers, with the reform of basic income or with the introduction of opportunities – Residence law provides even more incentives to come to the country,” said the CSU politician to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. It cannot be that the federal government wants to take in more and more refugees, but then abandons the states.