Illegal immigration to the Union has increased sharply this year. But an EU-wide solution is still not in sight.
Nancy Faeser no longer wants to stand idly by and watch the alarming development. The migration pressure on the EU, which has been increasing for months, has also reached Germany. A few days ago, the interior minister (SPD) called for solutions in the direction of Serbia, from where tens of thousands have traveled to the Union via the Balkan route in recent months.
The situation is also getting worse on the Austro-Hungarian border. The Burgenland state government warned that 2,000 to 3,000 migrants were apprehended every week, which almost corresponds to the figures for the great refugee year of 2015. This trend is also evident in the EU-wide increase in asylum applications: the authorities received a total of around 406,000 applications by the end of June, as the EU Asylum Agency (EUAA) announced in mid-September. This is an increase of 68 percent compared to the previous year. Almost half of the applications were approved, according to the EUAA. Most of the people come from Afghanistan, Syria and Venezuela.