The number of refugees residing in Germany saw a slight decline over the past year.
According to a response from the German government to an inquiry by the parliamentary group of the Left Party, as of December 31, the number of asylum seekers in Germany was approximately 3.53 million.
This figure includes around 1.33 million war refugees from Ukraine and approximately 707,000 individuals recognized as refugees under the Geneva Convention.
A year prior, the total number of refugees in Germany was about 3.54 million. This indicates that the number of refugees who passed away, left the country, were deported, or acquired citizenship was roughly 17,000 more than the number of new arrivals seeking asylum.
Clara Bunger, an expert on domestic policy for the Left Party, expressed that this decline is not a positive development, stating, “Fewer and fewer individuals in need of protection are able to cross the heavily fortified external borders of the European Union.”
War refugees from Ukraine are admitted into the European Union without asylum procedures and are granted work permits. This arrangement is currently valid until March 2027. In late August, the Ukrainian government allowed young men up to the age of 22 to leave the country despite the ongoing war with Russia.
As a result, a significantly larger number of young Ukrainians entered Germany in September and October of the previous year. According to the German government, out of 30,882 Ukrainians documented entering in September, 10,307 were young individuals within this age group.
However, their numbers have noticeably decreased in the subsequent months despite the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In December, German authorities recorded the entry of 6,198 Ukrainian nationals, including 1,489 individuals aged between 18 and 22.
