 is rising fast in the polls and has seized the opportunity to lambast the coalition government for its perceived failure to control the borders. European elections in June will be a big opportunity for the AfD, which is polling only three points behind the first-placed centrist CDU. Most local and state authorities say they are already stretched to their limit after accommodating more than a million Ukrainian war refugees, who are processed separately from asylum-seekers. 'The numbers are dramatic. At this rate we can expect 400,000 asylum applications this year,' said Alexander Throm, home affairs spokesman in the Bundestag for the CDU. The reasons for the abrupt increase are not yet entirely clear, although the slackening of the pandemic and a slowdown in the global economy appear to be contributing factors. The number of Syrian asylum-seekers entering Germany has almost doubled year on year, to 51,700 in the first seven months of 2023. There were also large rises in the numbers of Afghans and Turks applying for asylum. Until re){kind=link}
Germany is on course to record the highest number of asylum seekers in any year since the peak of the European migration crisis after the number of new arrivals rose by more than 75 per cent in the space of 12 months.
So far this year, Germany has received nearly 175,000 initial applications for asylum, compared with 218,000 in the whole of 2022.
Last month alone the central migration authority, known as Bamf, registered 23,674 new asylum seekers, up from only 13,200 the previous July. That is also more than double the 11,434 irregular immigrants who arrived in the UK on small boats in the first six months of this year.
The figures still fall far short of the record 722,370 asylum applications that Germany
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