German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last night, that he wants to see faster decision-making on submitted asylum applications, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
Scholz said this during his visit to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (FSMB) in the state of Bavaria.
In addition, Scholz promised that political efforts would be made, for example to improve the conditions for the return of asylum seekers under the so-called Dublin Regulation at the EU level.
"Our task must be to bring about a change in our practice," Scholz said in Nuremberg. He added that he is in "constant dialogue" with colleagues in several European countries.
FSMB employees have already expressed to Scholz their dissatisfaction with the existing practice, DPA points out. Some countries, including Italy, currently do not accept, or accept a very limited number of, refugees, even though they would be obliged to do so under the Dublin Regulation.
According to the Dublin rules, only one member state of the European Union can consider and process the asylum application of a given migrant - usually this is the country on whose territory the relevant refugee first set foot within the borders of the EU, DPA explains.
In general, Scholz called for faster review and processing of asylum applications. According to him, this is crucial for the authorities to be better accepted by the population. Regarding the use of technology in the proceedings, the chancellor said: "We need to ensure that we are the most modern state possible.
The number of asylum applications in Germany continues to fall this year, DPA points out, although it remains high. 121,000 asylum applications were submitted in Germany from January to June, about 20 percent less than in the same period last year. The majority of them are from Syrians, Afghans and Turks, DPA notes.
The number of known cases of children and young people who suffered sexual abuse in Germany increased last year, DPA reported, citing a police report. However, this finding alone itself is not alarming, states the "Federal Report on the Status of Sexual Offenses Against Children and Adolescents" from 2023.
In 2023, the police registered 16,375 cases of children being sexually abused, a 5.5% increase compared to the previous year. During the same period, 1,200 cases of young people who became victims of the same type of crime were also registered. The number of child pornography cases increased by 7.4% to around 45,000 cases, mainly due to numerous reports from abroad.
In the report on the current situation, the office of the Federal Criminal Police indicated that the number of detected cases of sexual abuse of children is closely related to the surveillance activities of the police. "In this respect, increased policing of criminal offenses in recent years has likely led to an increase in the number of reported cases," the report said.
"Sexual abuse of children and adolescents is one of the most horrific and repulsive forms of crime," said Home Affairs Minister Nancy Feser when the statistics were presented.
Many of the victims are still very young - more than 2,200 girls and boys were under the age of 6 at the time of the abuse, she said.
The reason why such investigations sometimes lead to nothing is the minimal data retention of telecommunications traffic. Feser again called for a new legally compliant regulation on the storage of data on users' telecommunications traffic and location.