Overview
- Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt informed Berlin Finance Senator Stefan Evers that the Interior Ministry will grant no consent for new or extended state-run family reunification schemes.
- Since its 2018 launch by the city’s red-red-green coalition, the program has allowed more than 4,000 Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis to bring relatives to Berlin under privately financed guarantees.
- Berlin’s finance office warned that families’ five-year insurance obligations lacked sufficient safeguards against future burdens on the state budget once private guarantees expired.
- The veto follows June’s Bundestag suspension of family reunification for subsidiary protection beneficiaries and underscores a tougher federal stance on migration policy.
- Berlin authorities must now suspend the scheme until federal approval is granted, setting up a clash between the city senate and the national Interior Ministry.