reception of refugees
States are pushing for federal support
03/17/2022 02:41 am
The willingness to help among the population is huge, but organizing the influx of refugees from Ukraine is a real challenge for the federal states and municipalities. How many people are coming and where should they be accommodated? The states are pushing for the federal government to organize better.
Before the consultations with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on how to deal with war refugees from Ukraine, the federal states and local authorities are urging better coordination. It is “essential to register those who arrive quickly and easily,” quotes the “Handelsblatt” from a draft decision by the heads of the state and senate chancelleries of the federal states for the consultations with Scholz on Thursday.
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser has a duty “to quickly improve nationwide coordination and distribution in coordination with the interior ministries of the federal states and to quickly define the framework conditions for registration,” it said. An “orderly and structured distribution process” taking into account the so-called Königstein key is “essential to avoid one-sided burdens on individual countries”.
According to the Handelsblatt, the draft resolution also provides that “the existing overloads in individual countries” would be absorbed and cushioned by the international community. The federal government must coordinate this because, due to the free choice of where the refugees are staying, there have so far been “only limited control instruments”.
Around 175,000 refugees from Ukraine have been registered in Germany so far, but the actual number is likely to be far higher. Large cities like Berlin are particularly heavily burdened when it comes to caring for war refugees. “In this acute situation, we expect additional clear commitments from the federal government in terms of organizational, personal and financial support, which we urgently need not only in Berlin,” said Berlin’s Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey to the newspapers of the Funke media group with a view to the federal country meeting. Your federal state is “currently taking in the largest proportion of refugees from Ukraine in a nationwide comparison”.
City day: emergency shelters will soon be overcrowded
The German Association of Cities is also calling for a better distribution of the Ukrainian refugees. “Especially in the big cities, the new emergency shelters in exhibition and event halls will soon be overcrowded,” said City Day President Markus Lewe to the editorial network Germany. At the Prime Ministers’ Conference, the federal and state governments would have to “agree on a coherent solution in order to distribute the refugees across all cities and communities” and also to create new reception capacities.
Lewe also called for a joint refugee summit by the federal, state and local governments. “We need the promise: Caring for the refugees is a joint effort that we are tackling as one. We expect that the federal and state governments will then also be willing to finance most of the accommodation and care for the people.” The cities should “not be left alone with this”.
The German Association of Towns and Municipalities expects billions in costs from taking in the Ukrainian refugees. “About 1,000 euros per person and month must be set aside for accommodation and integration,” calculated the chief executive of the Association of Cities, Gerd Landsberg, in the “Bild” newspaper. In view of the around 175,000 refugees from Ukraine, the municipalities are “faced with huge challenges in terms of accommodation and care”. The “billions in expenditure” would have to be “taken over by the federal and state governments”.