BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has put all asylum applications from Syrian nationals on hold until further notice after the toppling Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said on Monday.
Asylum requests will be not be processed until there is more clarity on political developments in the country, which is just emerging from a 13-year civil war, the spokesperson said.
Over 800,000 people with Syrian citizenship live in Germany, with the majority having come as refugees following former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to allow over a million asylum seekers to enter Germany.
Syria was the top country of origin for asylum seekers in Germany this year, with 72,420 asylum applications submitted by the end of November, BAMF data shows. Some 47,270 asylum applications from Syrians remain undecided.
The decision comes ahead of snap elections set for February. Far-right and conservative parties are topping the polls, and Germans view migration as the second biggest problem their country faces, a poll by Infratest showed on Friday.
The head Bavaria’s conservatives, Markus Soeder, on Monday referred to the BAMF suspension as “the right decision.”
“We even have to consider how a greater number of people can be repatriated to their Syrian homeland,” he said in a news conference.
(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa, Editing by Friederike Heine)
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