Germany’s Ruling CDU Party Targets Afghan & Syrian Benefit-Recipients In Push To Cut “Unsustainable” Welfare Budget

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Germany’s ruling CDU/CSU bloc is demanding stricter limits on welfare, with party leaders pointing to high rates of reliance on the citizen’s allowance among Afghans and Syrians.

Deputy parliamentary group leader Mathias Middelberg said job centers must do more to place these groups into work, stressing there is “still considerable potential for catching up in terms of taking up employment.”

“Just 100,000 more people in work instead of relying on the citizen’s allowance could, depending on wage levels, relieve the federal budget in the low single-digit billion range every year,” the lawmaker told Bild.

According to government figures cited by Middelberg, 52.8 percent of Syrians and 46.7 percent of Afghans in Germany rely on the citizen’s allowance, while only 36.7 percent of Syrians and 37 percent of Afghans hold jobs subject to social security contributions.

“We cannot accept that hundreds of thousands of young asylum seekers here in Germany are unemployed for decades,” he said.

The call comes amid soaring welfare costs, with annual spending on the citizen’s allowance at around €52 billion. Statistics from the Federal Employment Agency (BA) last year showed that of the more than 4 million people who can work but receive social benefits, more than 2.5 million have a migration background, constituting 63.5 percent.

At the start of 2024, of the 2.6 million non-Germans registered for benefits, 706,000 were from Ukraine, 512,000 from Syria, and 201,000 from Afghanistan.

CSU leader Markus Söder and CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann said that those unwilling to work should no longer receive support.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz reinforced the message over the weekend, warning that Germany’s welfare model is no longer sustainable. “The welfare state as we have it today is no longer financially viable with what we are achieving economically,” he said.

Rising unemployment, bankruptcies, and inflation risks are also evidence of the mounting strain.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel slammed the Grand Coalition government for continuing to oversee Germany’s economic decline on Tuesday, pointing to figures cited by Welt, which revealed 114,000 industrial jobs had been lost within the last year.

“The politically motivated deindustrialization continues unabated, even more than six months after the new elections. No economic turnaround without the AfD!” she wrote.

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