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Germany: More and more refugees who complain against the rejection of their asylum application are successful in court


Berlin - That comes from the answer of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request of the left-wing parliamentary group on the asylum statistics, about which the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (Friday edition) reports. In the first half of 2021, 35.1 percent of all lawsuits before the administrative courts that were decided in terms of content ended in favor of the refugees. That is significantly more than in the previous year, when the rate was 31 percent.

In these cases, claimants were granted protection status that had previously been wrongly denied them by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). In the first half of the year, the courts declared 10,176 of 29,025 BAMF notices to be unlawful. One reason for the increase is in particular the decisions on refugees from Afghanistan, because here the error rate of the BAMF was particularly high.

In corresponding court rulings, 75 percent of the plaintiff Afghans were found to be right - significantly more than in 2020 with 60 percent. The reason for this is, according to the left-wing parliamentary group, that the courts are far more critical of the security situation in Afghanistan than the BAMF, which often rejects Afghan refugees with reference to supposedly "safe areas" in Afghanistan. The error rates for plaintiffs from Somalia (44.9 percent) and Iran (38.4 percent) were also high.

The left-wing faction complains about "inadmissible political pressure" on the BAMF. The refugee expert of the Left, Ulla Jelpke, who had made the inquiry, said: "The reference to supposedly safe areas in Afghanistan corresponded to political guidelines, but not to the real conditions on the ground." This is particularly true after the Taliban came to power. The BAMF should therefore re-examine all the defendant Afghanistan notices on its own initiative and grant the necessary protection - also to relieve the courts.

Jelpke also sees this issue as a topic for the new government: "At the BAMF, too, we urgently need a breath of fresh air and the review of established rejection models." According to the Interior Ministry, the average length of proceedings in the courts has increased further and was now 26.2 months in the first half of the year. Last year it was 24.3 months.

Photo: © Fabrizio Bensch © Reuters.
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