Following a proposal from the Union, the FDP has also spoken out in favor of cutting the citizen’s allowance for refugees from Ukraine. “Newly arriving war refugees from Ukraine should no longer receive citizen’s allowance in the future, but should be subject to the Asylum Seekers’ Benefits Act,” said FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai to the “Bild” newspaper. This should create an incentive for people to look for work.
“We have a shortage of workers everywhere – for example in the catering industry, in construction or in care. We should no longer finance unemployment with taxpayers’ money, but must ensure that people get jobs,” stressed Djir-Sarai.
Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) and Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) had previously spoken out against the payment of citizen’s allowance, especially to Ukrainians of military age who have fled to Germany. “It doesn’t make sense to talk about supporting Ukraine as best as possible and at the same time supporting deserting Ukrainians,” Stübgen told the newspapers of the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
Herrmann told Bild that the federal government’s decision to immediately pay people from Ukraine full citizen’s allowance had shown “that completely wrong incentives are being set here.”
Martin Rosemann, the SPD parliamentary group’s spokesman on labor market policy, criticized the demands. In the Bild newspaper, he described the claim that the citizen’s allowance prevents Ukrainians from taking up work as “false.” It was only through the citizen’s allowance and the work of the job centers that Ukrainian refugees had access to labor market support. The Greens in Brandenburg also rejected the demands.
Since June 2022, war refugees from the country attacked by Russia have been able to receive basic social security benefits (then Hartz IV, now Citizen’s Allowance) in Germany – instead of the lower benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act. The federal and state governments agreed on this at the time. One of the reasons given for the change was that refugees from Ukraine are entitled to a residence permit directly and do not have to wait for a decision like asylum seekers. Ukrainian refugees are also allowed to work in this country. As usual, they are only entitled to Citizen’s Allowance if they have no or only a low income.
Last autumn, the federal government announced a “job boost” to enable refugees with prospects of staying in the country to find work more quickly. Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) announced that around 400,000 refugees would be placed in jobs directly from their language courses, including around 200,000 from Ukraine. According to figures from April, around 160,000 Ukrainian refugees have been placed in work since the start of the Russian war of aggression.