Rhineland-Palatinate gives municipalities more money for refugees
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate will support local authorities with more money for refugees in the coming year. A total of an additional 267.2 million euros is to be provided in 2024, as announced by Minister President Malu Dreyer (SPD) on Thursday following a meeting with representatives of municipal umbrella organizations in Mainz. The state government and the associations also agreed to join forces in the processing and organization of repatriations. Integration Minister Katharina Binz (Greens) announced a further expansion of the state's reception capacities and called for more staff from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
The 267.2 million euros for 2024 include an additional 67.2 million euros that the federal government will give to Rhineland-Palatinate in accordance with the agreements reached at the federal-state meeting in early November. It should be passed on in full to the municipalities, explained Dreyer. This money is part of the advance payment totaling 1.75 billion euros that the federal government promised the federal states at the beginning of November. In addition, 200 million euros have already been earmarked in the 2023/24 state budget as a provision to mitigate the consequences of the war in Ukraine - this still requires the approval of the Budget and Finance Committee.
Achim Schwickert (CDU), Chairman of the Landkreistag and District Administrator of the Westerwald district, expressed his satisfaction. "We are grateful for this," he said, referring to the additional money. "Frankly, we could not have expected this amount." This will provide the municipalities with a great deal of security for 2024, but the problem of finding housing for refugees remains.
At the meeting between the state government and local authority associations, it was also agreed that the local authorities would work more closely together in the implementation and organization of repatriations in future. The aim is that not all local immigration authorities will have to deal with this, but that it will be concentrated on just a few authorities. A detailed concept is being worked on, said Binz.
According to her, the state integration concept from 2017 is being further developed. This still assumed that a basic capacity of 3,300 places in the state reception facilities and the possibility of expanding to 6,600 places would be sufficient. This has been overtaken by reality, emphasized the Integration Minister. Since February 2022, the state has gradually expanded capacity to almost 8,000 places. Recently, there has often been a short-term expansion; in future, there should be a more medium and long-term plan. Binz did not specify a target for the expansion. The number of people in the recently significantly expanded facilities in Kusel and Hermeskeil should be reduced in the long term.
The aim must also be to shorten the duration of asylum procedures, said Binz. This would require more BAMF staff. The BAMF currently manages around 400 interviews with asylum seekers per week and needs more. In comparison, the state would have to distribute up to 550 people per week to the municipalities by the end of the year because the reception facilities are full - even though the aim is not to distribute people who have not yet been interviewed to the municipalities.
According to Joachim Streit, Chairman of the Free Voters' parliamentary group in the state parliament, local authorities are still being overburdened, "be it by the cost of accommodation or the excessive number of refugees allocated". The money is flowing far too late and does not begin to do justice to the tasks to be performed by the municipalities, criticized Streit. "What we need is a stable zero: zero costs for the municipalities and zero allocations of unauthorized asylum seekers to the municipalities." The state government had overslept the strategic expansion of initial reception facilities and was avoiding the creation of new facilities of this kind.
The additional 267.2 million euros allocated by Rhineland-Palatinate's government for refugees in 2024 will primarily benefit municipalities, as announced by Minister President Malu Dreyer. In light of this financial support, some municipalities may need to collaborate more closely on the processing and organization of repatriations, as agreed upon by the state government and local authority associations.
Source: www.dpa.com
