Germany is mulling cuts in cash handouts to newly arriving refugees, a spokesman said Friday, amid growing debate about how to provide for hundreds of thousands of arrivals this year.
Berlin has been sending the message that it would be hospitable to Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans fleeing war, but would accelerate moves to deter arrival of those fleeing poverty in the Balkans.
Last week it released a video aimed at Balkan citizens, warning they had almost no chance of winning political asylum.
Berlin said they would be billed for their own deportation, amounting to a ban on visiting Germany up until they pay up.
A spokesman said Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, was concerned that support in cash rather than kind might function as an incentive to travel to Germany.
The stipends kick in once refugees leave holding camps or have been in the unfenced camps for three months.
At camps, food and clothing and other daily needs are provided in kind from communal stores.
Balkan people are now being sent to camps reserved for fast-track hearings of their asylum claims, with only 0.1 per cent winning a right to stay.
The pass rate this year has been 82 per cent among Syrians
There has been fierce debate in Germany about whether to discriminate against people from Kosovo and other states, with pro-refugee groups saying it is unconscionable to send anyone home to face hardship.
De Maiziere told local media on Thursday that other European Union interior ministers considered the German level of handouts to refugees too high.
He also said German grants were equivalent to a policeman’s salary in Albania or Kosovo and charged that cash grants and advances were being used to repay the fees of human traffickers.
Refugee officials have already said up to 500,000 people are expected to arrive in Germany in 2015 in search of asylum, 40 per cent from Balkan nations that are not in the European Union.
Germany is counting more entries than any other EU nation. The forecast is to be revised next week.