Germany is home to the largest number of asylum seekers among the EU member states. But a growing political shift to the right has put increasing pressure on these new arrivals – and those who provide services for them.
RFI spoke to Nicolay Büttner, head of political work and advocacy at the Berlin-based Zentrum Überleben, which provides services to new arrivals and refugees.
"Over the past few months, we have indeed experienced an increase in uncertainty, in fear, and in questions about how things can continue," he said.
In the German election of 23 February, the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party became the second largest party in the country, with some 19 percent of the vote – the first time since the Second World War that a far-right party gained this position.
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The AfD's success followed a trend that has seen support for the far right grow in the European Union as a whole.
According to its website, the party advocates for "remigration" – the mass deportation of immigrants, and even naturalised citizens. The AfD has portrayed Muslim migrants as a "threat" to German society, in a shift from its initial focus on EU economic policies.
It backs "proposals for stricter immigration controls," such as rejecting asylum seekers at the border and establishing permanent border controls, while criticising the current government and opposition parties for causing what it calls "migration chaos".
In 2024, there were close to 3.5 million migrants in Germany with some form of international protection, according to infomigrants – more than at any time in the past.
'Indirect effect'
According to Büttner, although the AfD is not currently in the national government – and remains unlikely to be accepted as a coalition partner by the victorious centre-right CDU – German political parties "are certainly experiencing an indirect effect of the AfD's political demands".
He says this has been the case since 2015 when then-chancellor Angela Merkel made the decision to allow more than a million asylum seekers to come to Germany – famously telling the country, and the wider world, "Wir schaffen das" (We can do this).
"The democratic parties – the CDU, the SPD, the Greens and also the FDP – are showing themselves to be downright driven by the demands of the AfD," said Bütner. "They adopt the demands and, in parts, also pour them into law."
The CDU was recently supported by the AfD on a proposed migration law, which sought to tighten Germany's migration rules by implementing permanent border controls, rejecting all illegal entries, detaining deportable individuals and increasing deportations.
The motion initially passed by 348 to 344 votes, but was narrowly rejected at a second reading on 31 January by 349 to 338, with five abstentions.
But the CDU-AfD joint move had already led to massive demonstrations in Berlin and other cities across Germany last month.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz, the country's incoming chancellor, was quick to distance himself from the temporary alliance, claiming the AfD is out to "destroy" his party.
But the seeds of distrust between the CDU and its potential coalition partners had been sown.
Dr. Gero Neugebauer, a retired political scientist and emeritus of the Freie Universität Berlin, told RFI: "Prospective coalition partners, such as the Greens or the Social Democrats, have said: 'Merz, you have destroyed the central rule of democratic political culture, which was a complete non-engagement with the AfD'." As a result, they may now be reluctant to form a coalition government, he added.
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The AfD focused their campaign on "criminal foreigners," said Die Linke (The Left) politician Bodo Ramelow in an interview with public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, instead of focusing on immigration in the broader sense of the word.
And the results of this are seemingly coming to fruition. While, according to the latest figures from Eurostat, the EU's statistics agency, Germany continued to receive the bloc's highest number of first-time asylum applicants and unaccompanied minors as of September 2024, overall applications are going down.
"We have a third fewer asylum applications than last year," says Büttner, who believes that one reason for this may be that people are being deterred.
Asylum requests slump as EU borders tighten following shift to far right
Attacks on migrants
German police said they registered 218 "politically motivated attacks against refugee and asylum seeker accommodation" in 2024. Attacks against migrants "away from accommodation centres" numbered 1,905 cases – "including 237 that were classified as violent".
Agencies dealing with refugees are grappling to find solutions. Büttner fears that government grants may "become significantly less in the future" and added that Zentrum Überleben and its partner organisations "receive less or no more money from various funding programmes".
He says that a possible solution could be to "diversify funding so that we can position ourselves more broadly," but added that this may result in "more organisations applying for fewer resources" leading to a battle for funds.
But it is the speed with which things are changing that most worries Büttner. "The constitutional promise of equality is being permanently eroded," he says. "It is being abolished."
