Should refugees from Ukraine continue to receive citizen’s allowance or should they receive lower benefits, which are also available to asylum seekers? The relevant departments of the federal government do not think much of this debate.
The German government has rejected demands for lower state benefits for Ukrainian war refugees. The government has no plans to provide asylum seeker benefits instead of citizen’s allowance to people who fled to Germany from the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit in Berlin.
A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Labour pointed out that with the job centres being responsible for refugees from Ukraine, measures for their integration into the labour market could be taken more quickly.
FDP General Secretary: No more citizen’s allowance
FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai told the “Bild” newspaper: “Newly arriving war refugees from Ukraine should no longer receive citizen’s allowance in the future, but should fall under the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act.” Similar demands had previously come from the Union, but also from the FDP parliamentary group.
Most recently, Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) questioned the payment of citizen’s allowance to Ukrainian refugees and argued that the citizen’s allowance had become a “brake on taking up employment”.
This currently applies
While Ukrainian refugees were only entitled to benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act in the first months after the start of the war on February 24, 2022, since June 2022 they have been receiving basic social security, i.e. the same benefits as recipients of citizen’s allowance (then still Hartz IV).
The approximately 1.1 million war refugees from Ukraine who are currently in Germany were admitted in accordance with the so-called mass influx directive, as in other European Union states, and therefore did not have to apply for asylum. The spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Maximilian Kall, said that Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) welcomed the repeated extension of this directive, but at the same time called for a better distribution of refugees in Europe, as a particularly large number of Ukrainian refugees are currently living in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic.
According to the employment agency, in March 2024, 185,000 Ukrainians in Germany were employed in jobs subject to social insurance contributions – 127,000 more than before the war began. In addition, 47,000 Ukrainians were only employed in marginal jobs in March – 39,000 more than before the war began. The spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Labor said that many Ukrainian women were waiting for a childcare place for their children or were attending German courses.
Source: Stern
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