Bundescancer Olaf Scholz (SPD) has promised the cities no further support in caring for the refugees. The one billion euros in aid that was agreed at the refugee summit on May 10 comes in addition to the 15.6 billion euros that the federal government is already giving, said Scholz at the general meeting of the German Association of Cities in Cologne. Scholz pointed out to the cities that as Federal Minister of Finance in 2018 he offered the flexible financing system that reacts to fluctuating migration numbers and is now being demanded by the municipalities.
However, his proposal was rejected at the time. At the refugee summit, the federal states had proposed such a “breathing system”, but Scholz did not get through with it. Scholz was asked several times in Cologne to do something about the still increasing number of immigrants. The deputy president of the city council, the mayor of Leipzig, Burkhard Jung (SPD), said directly to Scholz: “The cities have their backs to the wall.”
Scholz, on the other hand, said that refugee policy should not be reduced to financial issues. That fuels resentment. The central element of government policy is migration partnerships with countries that take back foreigners who are required to leave the country, but in return can send people to Germany legally to work here. By 2030, six million people should come to Germany to counter the labor shortage. Scholz said that the federal government is also relying on “proper management” of asylum administration in Germany and the EU. This could be used to achieve “huge gains” in refugee policy.
The President of the German Association of Cities, the Lord Mayor of Münster, Markus Lewe (CDU), called on the federal and state governments to create new financial and legal framework conditions for the climate-neutral conversion of the cities. The transformation is “not for free”. A “new permanent funding system” must be created that will replace a large number of “inflexible” funding programs. “We know best what is necessary,” said Lewe. Instead, the cities would have to deal with complex bureaucratic requirements. Funding in the form of fixed budgets that run for at least ten years makes more sense.
“Huge sums” would come to the cities
Lewe spoke of “huge sums” that would come to the cities. However, it is not possible to finance the transformation of cities if the investment share in the overall municipal budget is only ten percent, as it is now, because the rest has to be spent on compulsory consumption tasks. The best thing would be a flat-rate allocation for the transformation of cities via sales tax. According to Lewe, the federal funds could be divided according to the number of inhabitants. The federal states could take into account other criteria such as financial weakness or regional peculiarities when distributing the money to the municipalities. Existing funding programs could be merged into the new program with fixed budgets for climate protection.
“We want more speed,” said Lewe on climate policy. However, it is “not feasible” that the cities, as provided for in the Building Energy Act (GEG), could already ensure a supply of 65 percent renewable energies by 2035 or by then give a guarantee that households would be connected to climate-friendly heating networks. However, time specifications by the legislature are superfluous anyway, because the goal is clear to everyone to have to achieve climate neutrality by 2045.
What the cities need is leeway to decide for themselves which intermediate goals they want to set for themselves by 2045, depending on the starting point. However, the GEG must be supplemented by a law that regulates municipal heating planning. “There is no corresponding law here”, but this is a prerequisite for being able to fulfill the GEG. The municipalities depend on this in order to be able to carry out forward-looking planning. The expansion of the heating networks will take years.
Lewe complained to the federal and state governments that the cities were not being involved in the energy transition legislation in good time. “It doesn’t work top-down, it only works together and is geared to the actual needs in the local cities.” Cooperative federalism must mean “that the federal and state governments don’t just inform us when a new regulation comes, everything has been negotiated and it’s already too late for urgently needed corrections”.
#Asylum #seekers #Scholz #give #cities #money