Challenge for an entire country
More than 800,000 people have fled to Germany so far in 2015. Dealing with the ongoing influx is a huge challenge.
The police in Passau and the surrounding area are now counting the refugees that arrive every day by the thousands. “We’re being overwhelmed,” says Thomas Lang, head of the Federal Police in Freyung. His officers can hardly keep up with the number of people that need to be registered. The idyllic region on the German-Austrian border has become the focal point of a mass influx of refugees never before experienced in modern Germany. Hundreds of thousands of refugees came to Germany at the height of the war in the former Yugoslavia, and 438,000 people applied for political asylum in 1992. Now, at the end of 2015, the figure is approaching the one million mark. At times, 10,000 people, most of them from Syria, flooded across the border every day.
Not only Passau has been living in a state of emergency ever since. These days you can recognise German mayors by the dark rings under their eyes. A real tour de force is needed to accommodate so many people even temporarily in such a short period of time. The gymnasiums are full. In Berlin the historic Tempelhof airport has been turned into a mass dormitory. Authorities like the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) can barely keep up with the influx. The BAMF is currently making appointments for asylum applications in mid-2016 – even though its workforce is to be boosted by 3,000 additional staff.
A “rendezvous with globalisation” is what Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble called the new experience. Never have people, pictures and information been so mobile. In the past, victims of civil wars have been stranded in their neighbouring countries. Today the people look for a new future where their smartphones show pictures of prosperity, peace and friendly people. For Germany, this has become the “biggest challenge since reunification”, as Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel put it in a government statement. So far, the country has not failed to live up to her expectation that “We can do this”. Despite all the problems, the structures have actually stood up to the surge of people remarkably well. In the space of a few weeks a logistical network developed that now quickly distributes newcomers all over the country. The pressure is greatest on the cities: they often have to create space for new refugees in a matter of a few hours. Nevertheless, no mayor has yet had to declare a city “closed due to overcrowding”. This is partly due to the great commitment of many volunteers. Help comes from churches, school students, nurses after their work shifts and university students during their vactions. Many are working round the clock, some are close to collapse. Not only citizens who feel insecure and fearful when confronted by migrants from distant cultures are asking where the limits of the welcome culture lie. Well-meaning people, too, worry about how long this can continue.
Financially, the masses of refugees are not a problem for the time being. The Federal Government has made 4.1 billion euros in additional funding available to the German states and municipalities, which bear the main burden under Germany’s federal system. The Federal Government has undertaken to provide more money if this is not enough. The federal budget for 2016 has provisionally set aside an additional 6.1 billion euros. Thanks to the stable economy, this will not require any new debt.
Nevertheless, no one has any illusions: with the population of a small town entering the country every day, all plans – from housing to the labour market – will have to be rewritten. The Bavarian state government’s integration package is a perfect example. The state estimates it will need almost 3.3 billion euros in 2016 – for infrastructure, integration courses and above all for 3,700 new jobs in the administration, including 1,200 teachers. At the same time, Bavaria’s business sector has undertaken to create an additional 20,000 positions for employees, trainees and interns in 2016 alone.
There is a consensus among politicians on this point: people who are already here must be integrated quickly into work and society. If that succeeds, most economists expect the refugees to benefit the country in the medium term, offsetting the costs that arose in the first few years. There are many well-trained people, particularly among Syrians. Anyone who can muster between 3,000 and 10,000 euros to pay a people smuggler is likely to come from the middle and upper strata of society. At the same time, it is essentially undisputed – even by parts of Germany’s parliamentary opposition – that a further uncontrolled influx would overwhelm the country – practically, politically and socially. Federal Chancellor Merkel, too, wants to continue showing new arrivals a “friendly face”, but emphasises that the influx must be ordered, regulated and – not least – reduced.
Steps have already been taken to drastically reduce the number of asylum seekers from Balkan countries such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. These people have next to no chance of being granted political asylum. A number of measures tightening up laws have been taken to simplify the hitherto difficult and lengthy deportation procedures. In future, applications from new Balkan refugees will be decided in central reception centres under a speeded-up process lasting three to four weeks; this is already standard practice at airports. When an application is rejected, the asylum seeker can be immediately deported. Of course, the relief this creates is more symbolic and preventive than real, because most of the other refugees are entitled to protection – Syrians, Iraqis and about half of the Afghans, to name but the largest groups. According to the European Schengen and Dublin agreements, they ought really to apply for asylum in the EU member states where they first arrived in the united Europe. But given the massive pressure of numbers, these rules are de facto no longer in force. And top German politicians are now openly admitting that the Dublin system was unfair, because it placed the entire burden on the shoulders of the countries at the EU’s external borders.
However, achieving solidarity in burden-sharing is proving difficult. While Dublin made life easy for Germany, the refugees’ desire to go to Germany or Scandinavia is now leaving other Europeans cold. The decision to distribute at least 160,000 people from Italy and Greece across the EU failed amid protests from Eastern European countries. Angela Merkel, France’s President François Hollande and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker are warning openly about the risk of a return to a Europe of border fences and egoism. The concern expressed here is more than just tactical lip service.
The Federal Government is therefore placing great hope in a burden-sharing agreement with Turkey, which, as a transit country, has a gatekeeper function on the refugee routes from the Middle East. Federal Chancellor Merkel’s idea is for Europe to help Turkey with billions of euros to look after the two million refugees who are on its territory, and for the EU, in return, to take in agreed quotas of refugees. Turkey would help secure the EU’s external borders and suffocate the thriving people-trafficking business in the Aegean. The plan is particularly hard for Federal Chancellor Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU to stomach, because the political price being demanded by the government in Ankara is a faster process of rapprochement with the EU. Also on the table is Turkey’s long-standing demand for protection zones in northern Syria based on massive Western military support.
Merkel doesn’t need to fear serious resistance from her own camp, because there is too much concern in the ruling parties that voters might turn to radical parties if the issue of external borders is not solved. Surveys already suggest that the right-wing populist AfD would enter the Bundestag if there were elections today; Merkel and her party have lost some votes – although they are far from losing their ability to form a majority. Opinion polls provide no evidence of any radical mood swing in the population against the newcomers. But when you talk to friends and acquaintances, you hear concern, scepticism, reservations on all sides. Attacks on refugee housing are on the increase. Verbal abuse is becoming increasingly blatant, both on the Internet and at demonstrations organised by the right-wing populist Pegida. It’s still too early to say whether the Paris terror attacks will exacerbate fear and resistance to integration, or whether solidarity with people who have fled terror at home will predominate. One thing is certain, however: this rendezvous with globalisation is stirring Germany up more than any event before it. The biggest surprise for Germans is perhaps their own openness. They wouldn’t have thought themselves capable of it. ▪
Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing to Germany in the hope of starting a new life in safety. #MyEscape shares their dramatic and personal stories of escape using photos and videos captured and recorded by the refugees themselves.
