People who have already found protection try again in Germany because the care is much better here. This makes it impossible to distribute the refugees fairly across the countries. The standards of care must finally be aligned within the EU, says Gunnar Schupelius.
The accommodations for asylum seekers are occupied, and new emergency accommodations have to be opened up all the time. In 2021, the number of asylum applications in Berlin doubled compared to the previous year to almost 13,000, and the trend is continuing.
The number of people who came to Berlin from Greece by plane increased particularly sharply, most of them Afghans. The security authorities counted 9,600 such entries nationwide in 2021, which was 12 times more than in 2021 and ten times more than 2019. This is what the status report of the “Joint Analysis and Strategy Center for Illegal Migration” (Gasim) says, in which the federal states work together.
The Gasim speaks of a “secondary migration”. Most of the migrants had already received protection, but they still wanted to apply for asylum in Germany again.
That’s actually not allowed. According to EU law, an asylum seeker must remain in the country where they were first admitted. The Federal Office for Migration therefore rejects the applications of people who come from Greece, for example, and expels them from Germany.
The Senate does not enforce such expulsions, which is why Berlin is a particularly popular destination for asylum seekers from southern Europe. Last spring there was also a spectacular judgment by the Berlin administrative court.
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An Afghan couple with two children complained that they did not have to return to Greece. The Berlin judges agreed with the spouses and cited three arguments to justify their decision. Firstly, the plaintiffs would not receive “decent accommodation” in Greece, because there they would be “principally responsible for their own accommodation as returnees”.
Secondly, they would not receive any social assistance because they had interrupted their stay in Greece and thirdly, “it can be assumed that the plaintiffs will not find work if they return”.
In summary, this means: Because the care in Greece is much worse than in Germany, the Afghans were allowed to stay, although they should not have been allowed to travel here.
Anyone who is in a detention center in Greece and hears about such a verdict will of course do everything to get to Berlin. That’s understandable, anyone would do that. And that is why “secondary migration”, as the authorities call it, is gaining momentum.
This development shows that the European asylum policy is not working. The EU has already invested 276 million euros in refugee camps on the Greek islands, but people still want to come to Germany.
Germany’s attempt to persuade other EU countries to take them in fails not only because of these countries, but above all because of the refugees themselves. As long as the care here is so much better than in southern Europe, nothing will change.
what to do Within the EU there must be uniform standards for the care of people.
And Germany must understand that it cannot maintain the particularly high level of care if the number of migrants is not limited.