Caritas has warned that the integration of Ukrainian refugees into the labour market will deteriorate sharply if the federal government moves the legal framework for social benefits into the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act.
“Shifting the legal basis to the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act will make labour‑market integration for refugees enormously harder” said Oliver Müller, head of migration, international, and disaster relief for the German Caritas Federation. “Proven support structures of the job centres will disappear, without any adequate replacement. In the health sector, discontinuities in care are already feared”.
The background is a plan by the black‑red coalition government that, from 1 April 2025, Ukrainian refugees will receive the lower benefits stipulated in the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act instead of social support or citizen’s income. A public hearing on the matter is scheduled for Monday afternoon in the Labour and Social Committee of the Bundestag.
Müller also criticised the German Interior Ministry’s restriction on integration courses: “The halt on free integration and German language courses makes access to language learning almost impossible under these conditions, even though German language skills are the central prerequisite for employment and participation. We therefore demand that the stop be lifted immediately. The enormous integration effort – both from the refugees’ side and from our society – is at stake”.