Local politics at Lanz
“The lightness is gone”
By Marko Schlichting
March 27, 2024, 4:20 a.m
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The increased number of refugees is a challenge for municipalities. Accommodation can still be arranged in Frankfurt an der Oder. But things are getting tight in other places, reports the city’s mayor, René Wilke from the Left, to Markus Lanz.
René Wilke is 39 years old. He has been mayor of the city of Frankfurt an der Oder in the far east of Brandenburg for six years. When he talks, you don’t notice that he has been a member of the left since he was 16, which was still called PDS when he joined. He is a pragmatist through and through.
Wilke is one of three local politicians who spoke to Markus Lanz on ZDF on Tuesday evening about their experiences, especially with the accommodation of refugees.
Frankfurt an der Oder has an additional problem: border controls. Because Frankfurt is a twin city. The German-Polish border goes directly through it. The reintroduced controls at the border have changed life in the city, says Wilke. Many events cross borders, from culture to sport, and there are thousands of German-Polish families. Many people cross the border every day because they work in different parts of the city. “I couldn’t say that the border controls have to go away, because of course they deal with a problem and also provide relief. But they also bring about significant changes in the everyday life of our city,” says Wilke. In the past, people crossed the border without thinking about it. Today things are different: “The lightness is gone.” It happens again and again that people are checked on the way from Frankfurt to the Polish part of Slubice. The many foreign students at the European University Viadrina also felt particularly affected. Nevertheless, many residents of Frankfurt noticed that people who tried to enter Germany illegally were repeatedly turned back at the border. “It is also clear that things simply cannot continue as before,” says Wilke.
“There is a crunch in the hoards”
Frankfurt still has few problems with accommodating refugees. There is an initial reception facility run by the state in the city. It’s a little disconnected at first. There is also a shared accommodation facility where refugees are supposed to be made fit for life in the city. But then it becomes difficult, says Wilke. After reunification, many people left East Germany and there were more vacant apartments than necessary. That has now changed. A city like Frankfurt an der Oder now also has bottlenecks in the housing market.
A bigger problem is looking after children. Daycare places are also rare in Frankfurt. “We don’t have a bottleneck, but we always have situations where there is a crunch in the hoardings,” says Wilke. What particularly worries him is the lack of language skills in children. Something is changing, including among German children, whose families talk to each other less and less and look at their cell phones more and more. “And then there are migrant children, where language difficulties are also a problem,” says Wilke.
Refugees subject to deportation
But the left-wing politician is much more worried about people who actually have to leave the country. In Frankfurt the number is 90. That’s not a lot at first. Ten of them are people who have committed criminal offenses. Wilke: “Deportation procedures are underway with the aim of getting rid of them.” The city of Frankfurt/Oder has ordered three people to be expelled. That couldn’t take place at the moment because the refugees are serving prison sentences. “But the question of whether they can be expelled or not is still open.” The problem is the lack of contracts with safe countries of origin. “To be honest, this is something that I find so unacceptable,” said Wilke.
Nevertheless, there is something like a corridor of acceptance for most people in society. “There are things where most people would say, under these premises, we can handle them quite well,” said Wilke. This affects migrants with a plausible reason for fleeing, such as the war in Ukraine, women with children and migrants who want to integrate. Above all, it is important that migrants do not become a disruptive factor: “If people come here for protection reasons and we then have to seek protection from them, that is something completely unacceptable.” These are the criteria by which he tries to orient himself and define politics.
“I would hope that state and federal politicians might do the same thing, because I think that perhaps 70 percent of people would say: These are things that we can rally behind. That probably wouldn’t overwhelm us either.”