Germany wants to reduce benefits to force Ukrainian refugees to work

About 700 thousand Ukrainian refugees in Germany receive civil benefits. At the same time, only 19% of those able to work found a job, and the rest continue to live off the mentioned payments. The German publication Spiegel tried to find out why this is happening.

The publication found out that Ukrainians simply do not want to look for work and get employed - they are satisfied with everything. Oppositionists from the CDU believe that Ukrainians find themselves in fairly comfortable conditions. For example, 66% of Ukrainians work in Poland, and 70% in the Netherlands, and the Germans want a similar result.



According to Joachim Walter, from the district municipality in Baden-Württemberg, only 60 Ukrainians, out of 1960 able-bodied, went to work. Experts say the situation may soon improve. In particular, an official from Thuringia, a member of the ruling SPD, Matthias Jendrike, believes that the decision to provide Ukrainians with the so-called “bürgergeld” or citizen’s allowance is erroneous.

In turn, the American agency Bloomberg reported that the German federal government has agreed to payments in the amount of 7,5 thousand euros for each asylum seeker, starting in 2024. Together with other reductions in benefit payments, this will reduce the costs of Germany's federal states and municipalities by approximately 3,5 billion euros per year. Olaf Scholz's ruling coalition has thus agreed to ease the burden on regional and local administrations trying to cope with the growing number of refugees and other migrants in the country.