Germany has seen a sharp decline in new asylum requests after Berlin introduced tougher policies on mass migration.
Just over 70,000 migrants applied for asylum for the first time in Germany between January and July 2025, down by half of the 140,783 of first-time asylum requests in 2024.
In total, 250,945 asylum applications — including both first time and subsequent follow-up applications — were filed in Germany in 2024. This was a decrease from 329,120 total applications in 2023.
Asylum and migration were major issues in the latest national elections and the current government felt vindicated in its policies.
Reacting to Bild-Am-Sonntag, the newspaper first reporting on the numbers on August 4, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said: “We have massively reduced the number of first-time asylum applications compared to the previous year.”
“Our course we will continue. We want procedures at the EU’s external borders, faster decisions and consistent returns. We are declaring an even tougher fight on the smugglers, because the State must regulate who comes to our country, not the criminal gangs of smugglers.”
In July, according to a spokesman for the interior ministry, 8,293 first-time applications for asylum were filed in Germany.
This was almost 45 per cent fewer than in the same month last year, when 18,503 applications were registered. From month to month, though, there was an increase of around a fifth. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 6,860 initial applications were recorded in June.
European Union data showed that Spain overtook Germany in May as the leading destination for asylum seekers, following a sharp decline in applications from Syrians after the fall of the Assad regime, the Times on Sunday reported.
Spain has seen several nights of ethnic violence between locals and migrant communities after an elderly Spaniard was attacked. https://t.co/Vtvpte3Pp5
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 14, 2025
In Germany, overall asylum claims dropped by nearly half, from 18,700 in May 2024 to around 9,900 in May 2025.
A major factor behind the decline was the reintroduction of border controls, which allows authorities to turn away asylum seekers lacking valid entry documents. The policy was one of new Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s key election promises and among his government’s first actions earlier this year.
Despite the EU’s passport-free Schengen area, checks were reintroduced at Germany’s borders with Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, France and the Czech Republic.
Not everyone was happy with the changes by the German government, a coalition of the Christian Democrat Union and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
Aziz Bozkurt, the federal chairman of the SPD’s Working Group on Migration and Diversity, said that Dobrindt policies “didn’t only have right-wing populist tendencies, but were right-wing populist” in an interview with the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau.
“This is also a danger to our constitutional state: If you undermine it in one place, then you have completely hollowed it out”, Bozkurt said.
The Social Democrat said Dobrindthad ignored court rulings and was pushing things to see how far he could go, calling this policy “extremely dangerous”.
Merz, together with leaders from Italy and Denmark, has been pushing for the EU to ease the process of deporting individuals whose asylum claims have been rejected.
According to EU data, up to 80 per cent of failed asylum seekers who were ordered to leave remain in Europe — including individuals with criminal records or links to terrorism, some of whom have gone on to commit attacks.
Efforts to fast-track deportations to so-called “safe countries”, though, have encountered legal obstacles. A ruling by the European Court of Justice on August 1 imposed stricter requirements, making it more difficult for member states to carry out such deportations.
The ECJ ruled on August 1 that no country may be designated a “safe country of origin” unless the entire population could be deemed safe — directly challenging national lists used to fast-track rejections.
In two landmark decisions, the European Court of Justice has significantly restricted how EU member states manage asylum claims, delivering a setback to more restrictive migration policies. https://t.co/1Hueka91yv
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 1, 2025
