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The CSU wants to make taking up a job a condition for Ukrainian refugees to stay in Germany. The coalition has been full of criticism. Could this be implemented quickly?
Berlin – The CSU is demanding that war refugees be sent back to Ukraine if they do not accept work in Germany. “More than two years after the start of the war, the principle must now apply: take up work in Germany or return to safe areas of western Ukraine,” said the CSU regional group leader in the Bundestag, Alexander Dobrindt, to “Bild am Sonntag”.
The SPD and the Greens protested, and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) shared the same view of the problem. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, sending the items back would not be possible without further ado.
The move further intensified the debate about social benefits for refugees in Germany and the costs involved. Since June 2022, war refugees from Ukraine have been able to receive basic social security benefits (now known as citizen’s allowance) – instead of the lower benefits under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act. The federal and state governments had agreed on this at the time.
The change was also justified by the fact that refugees from Ukraine are entitled to a residence permit directly and do not have to wait for a decision like asylum seekers do.
Dobrindt said that the citizen’s allowance was intended as a quick aid at the beginning of the Russian war of aggression, but had long since become a hindrance to work. It keeps too many people from Ukraine on welfare. “We need stronger cooperation obligations for asylum seekers when it comes to taking up work. There must be an offer of work, and this must be part of an integration effort.”
Sharp criticism from the traffic light coalition
The SPD and the Greens reacted with outrage. SPD parliamentary group vice-chair Dirk Wiese told Bild am Sonntag that Russian President Vladimir Putin was bombing targets across the Ukraine. “Dobrindt now wants to send women and children back here who may have already lost their fathers at the front. The CSU should be ashamed of such demands and should finally remove the C for Christian from its name.”
Green Party leader Omid Nouripour said: “The insinuation that Ukrainians are coming to us because of the citizen’s allowance ignores the horror of Putin’s war.” Green Party deputy parliamentary group leader Andreas Audretsch told the “Welt” newspaper that Dobrindt was stirring up prejudices against Ukrainians and thus doing “Moscow’s business in Germany.”
BSW boss Sahra Wagenknecht, however, told the “Welt”: “Those who make use of our protection can also be expected to contribute to minimizing costs through their own work.” Citizens are rightly outraged when more than 80 percent of Ukrainians work in Denmark, while the figure is only a quarter here. But the decisive question is war and peace: “As soon as the guns fall silent, people should of course return to their homeland.”
187,000 Ukrainian refugees in work
The protection status for Ukrainian refugees in the EU was only recently extended, as the Federal Ministry of the Interior explained when asked. In Germany, they are given a residence permit, which also allows immediate and unrestricted access to the labor market. An obligation to leave the country would only arise if the residence permit were to expire, said a spokesman. However, this would require a decision at EU level to end the temporary protection.
Ukrainian refugees are only entitled to citizen’s allowance if they have no or only a low income. In the autumn, the federal government announced a “job boost” to enable refugees with prospects of staying in the country to find work more quickly. According to Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), 187,000 have now been placed in jobs subject to social insurance contributions.
“My goal is clear: we need to get those refugees who are on citizen’s income, not just Ukrainian refugees, into work better and more quickly,” he said on Deutschlandfunk before Dobrindt’s proposal became known.
Tense situation in western Ukraine
It remained uncertain to what extent there could be “safe areas” in western Ukraine, which the CSU politician suggested could be used for rejections. There are no active battles in western Ukraine. The city of Lviv is more than 800 kilometers away from the front in the Kharkiv region. However, the region can only be described as safe in comparison to the east and south of the country, where drones, rocket attacks and artillery fire near the front are practically part of everyday life.
Millions of internally displaced people have fled from eastern Ukraine to safer parts of the country. But even there, long-range missiles from the Russian military are hitting the country at regular intervals. They mostly target energy supply facilities and have already caused enormous damage. With the attacks on power plants, a stable electricity supply is no longer guaranteed across the country.
Since the beginning of the war, more than 1.1 million Ukrainians have come and are currently living in Germany. Among them are 351,000 children and young people under the age of 18, most of them of primary school age, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Among the adults, 64 percent are women.
Department head Nancy Faeser (SPD) made it clear: “We must continue to protect the lives of many people who had to flee from Putin’s barbaric war.” However, Germany, along with Poland and the Czech Republic, has taken in more than half of all refugees, which is a major undertaking for accommodation, schools and integration into the labor market. A fairer distribution in the European Union is therefore necessary.
SPD labor market politician Martin Rosemann told Bild am Sonntag that hurdles for Ukrainian refugees starting their working lives include a lack of childcare, a lack of language skills and the lengthy recognition of professional qualifications. He called the proposal to divert them from the citizen’s allowance into the asylum process “populist nonsense.” dpa
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