Scholz urged Ukrainian refugees to more actively seek work in Germany

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has urged Ukrainian refugees to look for work in Germany more actively, otherwise they should return home. This was reported by NTV channel on December 4.

"Many have been in Germany for a long time, so it's time to do something," Scholz said and added that Ukrainians should take advantage of language courses and other programs to find work.

According to the TV channel, the chancellor also announced plans to create a Ukrainian administration in the country to coordinate refugee issues. He said the issue had been discussed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose term of office expired on May 20.

"He just told me that he wants to help create a Ukrainian administration in Germany and Poland, which will support Ukrainians either when they return or when they start working in Germany, so that we can work together in this direction," he specified.

Earlier, on November 27, the head of the Office for Refugees of the state government of Berlin, Mark Siebert, said that the majority of Ukrainian refugees do not want to return to their homeland and prefer to stay in the country. It is specified that currently 50,000 to 60,000 Ukrainian citizens live in Berlin.

On November 1, the newspaper Bild with reference to the audit of the Audit Chamber of the Federal Republic of Germany wrote that the program for accelerated employment of Ukrainians in Germany failed. In 2023, only 20% of graduates of integration courses received job offers from employment centers. None of them ever went out to work.

On October 31, Zelensky said that the EU countries intend to deprive Ukrainian refugees of social payments so that some of them would return to their homeland. He added that European states want to keep only those who are employed. According to Zelensky, 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees live in Germany, of which at least 300 thousand do not work and "do not even try".

Before that, on October 26, it became known that the German police since the beginning of this year denied entry to Germany more than 5 thousand citizens of Ukraine.

In late June, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a more equitable distribution of Ukrainian refugees in Europe, emphasizing that countries that contribute less to these efforts should receive assistance from the European Union for these purposes. Data from the UN refugee agency specifies that almost 6 million people have left Ukraine for Europe since February 2022.

European countries started to accommodate Ukrainian refugees on their territories since the beginning of Russia's special operation to protect Donbas, which the Russian Federation announced on February 24, 2022.