As "Russkaya Germaniya" notes, the German judiciary is no less consumed by the problems of asylum seekers in Germany than the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, BAMF). Virtually every case of denial of political asylum in Germany, after a negative departmental decision, goes to court for review. This is evidenced by the latest BAMF statistics for the first nine months of 2017, presented by the federal government in response to a parliamentary inquiry from representatives of the Left Party.
After receiving a rejection, refugees, with the help of lawyers, turn to administrative courts. 44% of lawsuits are successful. Courts make the most decisions in favor of asylum seekers in cases involving people from Syria (69% of lawsuits granted) and Afghanistan (61%). Among those who go to court, there are also many who disagree with the status of temporary asylum seeker and demand official recognition as refugees. These are mostly Syrians as well, and in 70 percent of cases, courts of first instance rule in their favor.
In turn, the Office for Migration and Refugees contests these verdicts – and also not without success: courts of second instance generally support BAMF's position. This legal merry-go-round places a significant burden on the German judicial system. For instance, in the first three quarters of 2017, 273,000 relevant lawsuits were filed – twice as many as in the comparable period of the previous year. Twice as many court decisions were also handed down – about one hundred thousand.
In the same 9 months of 2017, about 20,000 asylum seekers voluntarily left Germany. The main incentives for them were apparently the lack of prospects for recognition and the financial support that the federal government promised to provide to such volunteers. During the same period, 18,000 people who were definitively denied refugee status were deported from Germany.
As part of consultations on the possible formation of a new grand coalition, held in Berlin by representatives of the three parties ready to form it – the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union, and the Social Democratic Party – the issue of refugee admission was also discussed. Conservatives and Social Democrats are prepared to limit their number to 220,000 people per year. The two-year moratorium on family reunification for persons with temporary status, in effect since March 2015, will likely be extended.
Meanwhile, new problems for the German authorities are being prepared by another initiative of the European Parliament, which intends to introduce a new – automatic – system for distributing refugees among EU countries. In effect, the European Parliament has called for reforming the current Dublin Agreement, under which the question of granting asylum must be considered by the immigration services of the state where the immigrant first applied for asylum or first set foot on EU soil.
The new system will formally take into account criteria such as the size of the population and the economic development indicators of a given member of the European Community. In addition, the country where the applicant's relatives already reside will have to consider the asylum application.
As a result, Germany will have to accept significantly more refugees, fear representatives of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, who analyzed the new European initiative. For it to come into force, the reform must be supported by a session of the European Parliament, after which the amendments will be submitted for consideration to the Council of the European Union. Its decision is difficult to predict: many Eastern European EU members are sharply opposed to automating the system of distributing refugees among the community's states.