France has overtaken Germany as Europe’s top destination for asylum seekers. During the first quarter of 2025, France registered more than 40,000 applications, just above Spain (39,318) and Germany (37,387). This is a 41 per cent drop in German applications for the same period in 2024; Interior Minister Nancy Faeser attributed the fall to a ‘strong package of measures, Germany’s own actions and close European cooperation’.
Germany has been Europe’s destination of choice for asylum seekers since 2011. The country was considered the most welcoming, in part because of the impression cultivated by the former chancellor Angela Merkel, who issued an open invitation to migrants and refugees in 2015.
Successive British governments have claimed there is no ‘silver bullet’ for cracking the migrant crisis
Her successor, Olaf Scholz, continued this policy until the numbers became unmanageable; in 2023, a record 334,000 people claimed asylum in Germany. Last year there were a series of atrocities committed on German soil by asylum seekers – including the fatal stabbing of three festival-goers at Solingen – which prompted Scholz’s government to act.
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