March 1, 2016 12:01
pm
Europe’s
top court places curbs on Germany’s migration policy
Duncan Robinson in
Brussels and Guy Chazan in Berlin
The EU’s top court
placed tough curbs on Germany’s ability to dictate where refugees
can live, in a move that could complicate efforts by Berlin to
distribute refugees across the whole country.
In general, people
who have been granted international protection should be free to live
where they like in a country, the court ruled. But Berlin can in
certain circumstances dictate where arriving refugees stay, in order
to help their “integration”.
The ECJ decision
will limit Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to share out refugees
in the face of an influx of more than 1m people in 2015 and a growing
popular backlash against their arrival.
The ruling
explicitly dismissed the defence that such residence restrictions
helped spread the burden of social welfare payments, which are a
major concern for Germany’s regions.
EU rules “preclude”
such bans even if they are aimed at “achieving an appropriate
distribution of the burden connected with the benefits in question”,
according to the court.
The case centred on
two Syrian nationals, who arrived in Germany between 1998 and 2001 to
seek asylum.
Although both their
applications were rejected they were given subsidiary protection,
which allows people who do not qualify for refugee status to stay in
a country because they would be at risk if deported.
Both were granted
residence permits but with so-called “residence conditions” that
dictated they could only live in one part of the country, which they
challenged in a German court.
Germany has long
tended to distribute refugees around the country as part of a
deliberate policy to prevent the formation of ghettos in big cities
such as Berlin and Hamburg.
The government also
wants to be able to direct immigrant flows to underpopulated parts of
the country such as the former communist East Germany, where there is
plentiful housing and a shortage of young, working age people.
The strategy was
pursued aggressively in the 1990s when the country faced a large
influx of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union and Romania.
The immigrants were told to live in certain towns and villages and
had welfare benefits cut if they moved away.
The German
government is currently preparing a law which would expand the
existing residency restrictions to refugees whose asylum requests
have been approved. A spokesman for the interior ministry said the
ECJ decision now paves the way for such a law to be adopted. “It
makes clear that [Germany’s] residence conditions are in compliance
with European law, even for recognised refugees, and that the
integration argument is an acceptable reason [for such
restrictions],” he said.
But refugee
organisations disagreed. “A close reading of the decision makes
clear that residence conditions for people with subsidiary protection
and refugees are not possible in terms of European law,” said Marei
Pelzer, a legal expert with refugee advocacy group Pro Asyl. The
group called on the government to drop plans to expand the current
rules
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