Bavarian CSU demands Ukrainians to get jobs or return home

The Christian Social Union in Bavaria wants to send unemployed Ukrainians back to Ukraine. The party also calls for the cessation of paying citizenship benefits to war refugees. Instead, Ukrainian citizens would be directed to the asylum procedure, which has lower benefits.

The Bavarian party demands the return of Ukrainian citizens to their country if they do not take up employment in Germany.

"After more than two years after the outbreak of the war, the principle should now be applied: get a job in Germany or return to the safe areas of western Ukraine," said Alexander Dobrindt, leader of the CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

The Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, part of the ruling coalition, sharply criticised this demand. SPD Vice Chairman Dirk Wiese pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin is continually bombing targets across Ukraine.

"Putin continues to bomb targets across Ukraine. Now Dobrindt also wants to send back women and children who may have already lost their parents at the front," said Wiese, commenting that the CSU should be ashamed of such demands and "forever remove the letter 'C' from its name, which stands for 'Christian', for once and for all."

Omid Nouripour, co-chair of the Green Party, pointed out the "insinuations that Ukrainians come to us for social assistance do not recognise the horror of Putin's war." Nouripour also rejected the proposals of the CDU and CSU Christian Democratic parties, which suggested not granting Ukrainians citizenship benefits immediately but first directing them to the regular asylum procedure.

Recently, German Interior Ministers called for the cessation of citizenship benefits for war refugees from Ukraine and granting them only lower benefits for asylum seekers. Olaf Scholz's government rejected the proposal.

Dobrindt claims that citizenship benefits were supposed to be a quick help at the beginning of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine but have long since become a hindrance to working. The CSU leader pointed out that too many people from Ukraine cling to this social benefit instead of going to work.

Labour market expert Martin Rosemann emphasised that many Ukrainian refugees are single mothers. He told the newspaper that the obstacles to Ukrainian refugees' employment are the lack of childcare, language proficiency, and the long process of recognising professional qualifications. He called the proposal to transfer them from citizenship benefits to the asylum procedure "populist nonsense".