BERLIN (Reuters) – Asylum applications in Germany fell by 34% last year, the interior ministry said on Tuesday, in news welcomed by the outgoing Social Democrat interior minister amid heated debates over migration ahead of a national election set for Feb. 23.
Public angst over migration has surged amid a flurry of violent incidents involving immigrants, including a car-ramming and a deadly knife attack in the past two months alone that killed a total of eight people.
These concerns have stoked support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which opinion polls put in second place behind the main conservative opposition.
Germany registered 213,499 asylum applications in 2024, down from 322,636 the year before, the new data showed. Last month, 37% fewer applications were submitted than in January 2024.
Federal police registered almost a third fewer illegal arrivals in 2024: 83,572 versus 127,549 in 2023.
“This shows once again that our measures are working,” said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, whose Social Democrats are languishing in third place in opinion polls before the election.
Law enforcement continues to push back strongly against irregular migration, she added.
In response to the public concerns, Germany last September reintroduced immigration checks at all its land borders, a move that drew criticism from neighbouring countries which said it breached the European Union’s principle of free movement.
Last week Friedrich Merz, the conservatives’ leader who is tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor, pushed a non-binding motion through parliament demanding a further tightening of border controls. However parliament later rejected a draft bill, also sponsored by Merz, that called for restrictions on family reunification and more expulsions at the borders.
Both votes caused controversy in Germany because they had the support of the AfD and thus marked a breach in a long-standing taboo among mainstream parties against cooperation with the far-right party.
In a further sign of how migration is rocking the election campaign, tens of thousands of people protested in Berlin on Sunday against the conservatives’ efforts to limit immigration and against the AfD.
(Reporting by Andrey Sychev; Editing by Kirsti Knolle and Gareth Jones)
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