“Our payment card is harder”: Söder explains how Bavaria wants to eliminate asylum “incentives”.

The payment card for asylum seekers is coming. Bavaria is taking a special approach. The “Bayern card” should come faster and harder, as Markus Söder emphasizes.

Munich – The payment card for asylum seekers has long been at the top of the Free State’s wish list. The state government of Markus Söder (CSU) began tendering for the project in November. Now Söder has gone on the offensive again verbally. It had already become known: Bavaria is taking a special approach to the measure.

“Our payment card comes faster and is harder,” said Bavaria’s Prime Minister Picture on Sunday (BamS, February 4). His stated goal: reduce incentives for asylum seekers. Whether this can work in this way is at least controversial among observers and experts.

Söder praises Bavaria's asylum seeker “payment card”: “We're stopping transfers abroad”

Söder made it clear that Bavaria was speeding up the payment card process. “While the card is only being advertised elsewhere, we will start testing in practice in a month,” he announced in the BamS at. A pilot project is planned in four municipalities – in Upper Bavaria, Swabia and Lower Bavaria.

The “Bayern Card” is intended to enable significantly fewer cash withdrawals than is envisaged in other federal states. It should only be able to be used near the accommodation and apply to a very limited range of goods. “Only goods for everyday use can be bought in shops,” said Söder. “We are stopping online shopping, gambling and overseas transfers. Cash is only available as small pocket money up to 50 euros.” There is significantly more money elsewhere.

“We say yes to help for refugees, but no to transferring money abroad,” emphasized Söder again in a post on Platform X on Sunday morning: “It doesn’t help anyone when asylum seekers send money home from Germany. Instead, sensible local programs are needed.” Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) also made a similar statement: “with all understanding” the financial support does not serve to finance families in the home country.

Söder goes on the offensive when it comes to asylum: “Away from individual rights”

At the weekend, Söder also questioned the individual's basic right to asylum – and questioned citizen's benefit payments for people who had just arrived in Germany. “We have to move away from the individual right to asylum towards an objective claim,” said Bavaria’s Prime Minister Rhenish Post. “The citizen’s allowance should be canceled for someone who comes to Germany,” he also explained.

The Union faction leaders had also recently put the issue of asylum back at the top of the agenda. They called for a special summit with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). This is also important because of large demonstrations against AfD and right-wing extremism, it said in a resolution. The “confidence shown there by the middle population” must not now be “destroyed by inaction”.

Countries agree on payment card, Bavaria with special route – researcher doubts the effect of “pull factors”

On Wednesday (January 31), according to Hesse, 14 of the 16 federal states agreed on standards for a payment card for asylum seekers. In addition to Bavaria, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is also going its own way. “With the introduction of the payment card, we are reducing the administrative burden on municipalities, preventing the possibility of transferring money from state support to the countries of origin and thereby combating inhumane smuggling crime,” said Hesse’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) as chairman of the Prime Minister’s Conference (MPK). said.

The social affairs officer from the organization “Pro Asyl”, Andrea Kothen, was present stern.de surprised at the MPK's quick agreement. She referred to “failed” examples – for example in the Erding district. Helpers actually described many “everyday problems” there. District Administrator Martin Bayerstorfer, however, most recently moved in Erdinger Anzeiger a positive conclusion
to the “municipal pass”.

Migration researcher Matthias Lücke from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy had already warned in November about excessive expectations of payment card solutions. “To the extent that we could cut, social benefits are not a pull factor,” he emphasized IPPEN.MEDIA. “It remains difficult to convey to the public the complex causes and effects of migration and the influence of politics,” he complained. (fn with material from Reuters)

Category list image: © Peter Kneffel/dpa