Europe | Willkommen

There are not enough Germans to do the jobs Germany needs

The government is mulling making it easier to hire immigrants

Two Syrian refugees at work for Deutsche Post in Berlin, July 28, 2016. The Netherlands, Germany and other countries amended laws to ease access to the labor market, allowing newcomers to work almost immediately instead of waiting months or sometimes years, but the adjustment has been harder than expected. (Gordon Welters/The New York Times)Credit: New York Times / Redux / eyevineFor further information please contact eyevinetel: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709e-mail: info@eyevine.comwww.eyevine.com

Oct 6th 2022|BERLIN

Perhaps Friederich Merz thought he was being clever. The head of Germany’s main opposition party recently claimed on television that many of the 1m Ukrainians who flooded into Germany this year came not as refugees but as what he called “social tourists”, to take advantage of government benefits. He should have known better. Even his own Christian Democrats (CDU) said their leader had overstepped the mark. He was forced to apologise.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Willkommen”