Unearned income: in Germany, they wanted to deprive Ukrainians of increased benefits
Only a third of Ukrainians living in Germany are employed, so the German authorities have considered depriving the rest of benefits. So far, this will only affect those who arrived after April 1, 2025, but some senior politicians in the CDU are proposing to cut benefits for everyone. Their initiative is supported by the leading opposition Alternative for Germany party. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
Leave everyone without payments
There is active talk in Germany about the possible abolition of social benefits for Ukrainian refugees. Markus Zeder, Prime Minister of Bavaria and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), was the first to propose to deprive them of basic social unemployment benefits.
"We finally need to make sure that anyone who can work goes to work. For example, in the case of Ukrainians, care must be taken to ensure that they no longer have basic social unemployment benefits. And it's best that not only those who will come in the future, but everyone," he said.
View of a temporary shelter for Ukrainian refugees, Hamburg, Germany
According to the politician, "no other country provides such conditions to Ukrainian refugees as Germany, and this explains why so few people from Ukraine work in Germany."
In May, the CDU/CSU and the SPD signed a coalition agreement, which fixed the need to change the system of unemployment benefits for Ukrainian refugees. However, the reform only applied to arrivals after April 1, 2025. Now they are entitled to lower payments — only benefits that are stipulated by the Law on Asylum, as in other EU countries.
This bill was presented in early August by German Labor Minister Barbel Bas. He was criticized by some conservatives, demanding that benefits for all refugees be cut.
Zeder insists that the changes affect all Ukrainian citizens, including those who previously received asylum in Germany. He was supported by high-ranking representatives of the CDU: the head of the chancellery, Thorsten Fry, and the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer.
The co—chairs of the country's main opposition force, Alternatives for Germany, also sided with them. Tino Fragalla said that Ukrainians illegally receive civil benefits and that they need to return to their homeland. Alice Weidel pointed out that the bill submitted by the Ministry of Labor is a "cheap trick" that will not change anything.
Living on benefits
Some members of the Bundestag, in turn, argue that it is almost impossible to change the legal status of refugees retroactively.
After February 2022, EU countries activated an emergency temporary protection mechanism for arrivals from Ukraine, allowing them to obtain refugee status on an expedited basis and bypassing the standard asylum procedure. This mechanism has been extended until March 2027.
According to Brussels, over 4.25 million Ukrainians have received temporary protection in the EU. This guarantees them the right to work, live, social security, access to education and medical care. At the same time, the norms of the minimum level of benefits are set individually by the EU countries.
Germany, which, according to Eurostat, has granted temporary protection status to over 1 million Ukrainians, has allowed them to automatically apply for resident status. Thanks to this, they can expect to receive the same benefits as German citizens, which is more than 100 euros more than asylum seekers: €563 per month versus €460.
Last year, €6.3 billion was allocated from the German budget for payments to Ukrainian refugees.
According to the Federal Employment Agency, about 30% or 272 thousand of the 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany are officially employed.
As a result, Germany became one of the countries that accepted the largest number of refugees and provided them with some of the most generous benefits, but years later received one of the lowest employment rates.
What do the experts think
Artem Sokolov, a senior researcher at the MGIMO Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, noted in an interview with Izvestia that the German authorities have long been discussing an initiative to reduce or completely stop payments to migrants and refugees not only from Ukraine, but also from other regions of the world.
— And this is primarily caused by the need to reduce the expenditure side of the budget, and it may seem that reducing certain categories of payments to migrants and refugees will be the way out in this situation, — said the German.
According to the political scientist, there are also a large number of politicians who oppose such measures, arguing that these are not such large sums and, in principle, the problem of budget deficit cannot be solved in this way.
— In other words, the decision actually at the expense of certain categories of people is not very consistent with the humanistic foreign and domestic policy of Germany. But at the same time, if we are talking specifically about the category of Ukrainian refugees, one of the arguments is indeed their low level of involvement in German labor relations," the specialist explained.
The expert added that neighboring Denmark is often cited as an example, where the rate of refugees entering the labor market is almost one hundred percent.
—But most likely, the German leadership will follow the "middle" path, that is, payments will be reduced, but not so much that the refugees, Ukrainian or otherwise, will be in a position where this money will not be enough to maintain minimum needs," the analyst is sure.
Sokolov stressed that at the same time, these measures, in turn, will not solve the problems of the deficit of the revenue side of the budget, and its huge expenditure side.
Natalia Eremina, a professor at St. Petersburg State University, explained in a conversation with Izvestia that Germany was considering these measures for several reasons.
—Firstly, the number of refugees in general is growing very sharply, not only from Ukraine, but also from the Middle East and North Africa, so together with Ukrainians they constitute a very serious social burden for Germany," the political scientist said.
According to her, refugees represent a different expense item from migrant workers who come to work.
— Refugees receive such significant benefits in terms of guaranteed payments, and these payments are quite large. In addition, they are provided with housing, and they are supported by the state," the expert said.
The specialist stressed that the largest number of Ukrainians settled in Germany.
— From the point of view of the Germans, these are healthy people who cannot find a job and are not looking for work because they rely on these benefits. At the same time, they travel to their own homes in Ukraine, periodically traveling back and forth. Of course, the Germans are also outraged that if Ukrainians say that they owe them everything because they defend certain values, then why don't they defend them with weapons in their hands," the analyst explained.
Eremina added that in this case, many people in Germany are annoyed by the very fact of the presence of refugees in general.
— The irritation is all the more growing, because among the refugees there are privileged groups that receive the most assistance. At the same time, in fact, they turn out to be more like a weight on the legs of the weakening German economy. So the German authorities are likely to further tighten the principles of allocating aid to Ukrainians," the political scientist concluded.
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