Following demands from the CSU
Federal government does not want to force Ukrainians to return
24.06.2024, 14:50
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Parts of the CSU are demanding that Ukrainians unwilling to work be sent back to their homeland. The Foreign Office has now clearly rejected this. The reason is obvious: Ukraine is not safe – not even in the western part of the country, which is repeatedly attacked.
In the debate about citizen’s allowance for some of the Ukrainian war refugees in Germany, the German government has rejected considerations of a forced return to certain areas. “We can see that the Russian armed forces are carrying out their attacks throughout Ukraine in their war of aggression, which violates international law,” said a spokesman for the Foreign Office in Berlin. The Russian attacks were directed against the power supply and other civil infrastructure facilities, among other things. “So I don’t know where there would be a safe place in Ukraine,” he added.
At the weekend, the CSU called for war refugees to be sent back to Ukraine if they do not accept work in Germany. “More than two years after the start of the war, the principle must now apply: take up work in Germany or return to safe areas of western Ukraine,” Alexander Dobrindt, head of the CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, told “Bild am Sonntag”.
Since June 2022, war refugees from Ukraine have been able to receive basic social security benefits (now called citizen’s allowance) – instead of the lower benefits under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act. The federal and state governments agreed on this at the time. They do not have to apply for asylum because they are accepted into the European Union on the basis of the Mass Influx Directive. This status was most recently extended for the Ukrainian refugees until March 2026. This does not regulate what financial state support they will receive in the individual EU states.
Government continues to hope for “job boost”
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Germany is currently offering protection to around 1.17 million people from Ukraine, the majority of whom are women and children. According to Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, around 187,000 Ukrainian refugees recently had a job subject to social insurance contributions. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit referred in this context to the so-called job turbo.
In the autumn, the federal government announced a “Job Turbo” to enable refugees with prospects of staying in the country to find work more quickly. The fact that Ukrainian refugees take up work that requires social insurance “is entirely in their interest, but also in our interest,” said Hebestreit. However, the figures for the “Job Turbo” have so far fallen short of expectations.