Many procedures from 2023: Asylum procedures last as long as it has not been since 2017

Anyone who makes an asylum application in Germany is waiting for an average of 8.7 months. This emerges from a response from the Federal Government to a request from left-wing MPs, which is available to the German Press Agency.

Accordingly, the processing of applications by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) last year did not take as long as it has not been since 2017. At that time, 10.7 months passed from the application to the decision. In 2023, the applicants waited an average of 6.8 months for a decision.

Nigerians waited for an average of 20.1 months

According to the federal government, applicants from Togo, Gambia and Nigeria had to be patient for a particularly long time last year. They were waiting for their asylum notice for more than 20 months. However, asylum seekers from the Palestinian areas and the Sudan civil war country only received a – mostly positive – decision after around 15 months.

For the 960 completed asylum procedure of Sudanesen last year, the federal government states a protection rate of 99 percent. In almost 82 percent of cases, protection was awarded in the 433 -decided procedures that concerned people from the Palestinian areas.

In the duration of the procedure of Palestinian applicants, however, it must be taken into account that people from the Gaza Strip have not decided on applications from people from the Gaza Strip because of the volatile situation in the area, which has been strongly destroyed by the war since January 9, 2024.

Several European countries, including Germany, had suspended decisions on the asylum procedure of people from Syria on December 8th after the fall of ruler Bashar al-Assad. Last year Syria was the main country of origin of asylum seekers in Germany with around 33 percent of all initial applications.

The Federal Government explains the overall longer procedural period by the fact that the BAMF is currently increasingly focusing on the “residue reduction of pending procedures with a high laying season”. In fact, the number of asylum seekers had risen sharply in 2023. With around 329,000 initial yields, it was around 51 percent higher than 2022. In the past year, there was a decline of around 30 percent to around 230,000 asylum applications.

So -called cancellation procedures are not taken into account in the statistics on the duration of the asylum procedure. These are, for example, when the situation in the country of origin has changed fundamentally. “Politicians have to find a solution to avoid elaborate cancellation proceedings in recognized Syrian refugees as far as possible,” says Clara Bünger, domestic politician of the left. After all, the BAMF is already overwhelmed.