Asylum fraud: Italy sells itself as THE suffering state - but Germany shoulders much more

BERLIN LIVE Asylum fraud: Italy sells itself as THE suffering state - but Germany shoulders much more Article by Marcel Görmann • 5 hours Asylum burden: Italy and Germany Italy sounds the asylum alarm! “The reason for migration that Italy has been experiencing since the beginning of this year is untenable,” complains Prime Minister Girogia Meloni. She calls for an EU mission to block migrant boats in the Mediterranean as soon as they leave. The images from Lampedusa are particularly dramatic these days. More than 5,000 people arrived there via the Mediterranean on Tuesday - a new record. The initial reception center on the small island, which lies between Sicily and North Africa, was now extremely overcrowded. But is it really the case that Italy has to bear most of the burden? Not at all, as asylum numbers show! Italy would have to accept many more asylum seekers - instead, Germany bears most of the burden Lukas Gahleitner-Gertz is spokesman for “asylkoordination Österreich”. The institution has been supporting asylum seekers in Austria since 1991. Gahleitner-Gertz is well informed about the current asylum numbers in Europe. His verdict: There is a discrepancy between the images of the excessive demands of the Italian state in Lampedusa and the sober facts. There have been a total of 652,075 asylum applications in Italy since 2013. That is 9.4 percent of all asylum applications in the EU. However, Italy's population share in the EU is 13 percent! From a purely statistical perspective, Italy would have to shoulder more - and is transferring the burden to other EU states! Especially in Germany. The EU-wide proportion of asylum applications in this country is 34.9 percent – well above average. Asylum: The country no longer adheres to Dublin rules either Another example from Gahleitner-Gertz on X (formerly Twitter) underlines the injustice of asylum. In Austria there have been around 180,000 positive asylum procedures in the past ten years. In Italy, on the other hand, there are not even twice as many (313,525), even though the country has more than six times as many inhabitants! The asylum expert also points out that Italy has no longer taken back asylum seekers from other EU states via the Dublin system since December. The Dublin rules stipulate that asylum seekers must submit their application in the first EU country in which they are registered. Anyone who tries to do so in another country can be sent back there. However, Italy no longer adheres to this agreement. The fact that Lampedusa has become a bottleneck is a “management failure,” said the Austrian. However, the fact remains that Italy has a below-average number of asylum procedures despite the problem of the external border.