Germany’s Ukrainian work program has failed – Stern

A program launched by the German government with the aim of increasing employment among Ukrainian refugees has largely failed, Stern magazine has claimed, citing an analysis by the Federal Audit Office. Meanwhile, the burden on the country’s budget in the form of social benefits for newcomers has steadily risen, the outlet has said.

Germany has been a prime destination for Ukrainian refugees in the EU since the conflict between Moscow and Kiev escalated in February 2022. The bloc’s economic powerhouse has accepted approximately 1.2 million people from Ukraine, Stern reported on Thursday.

Of those, an estimated 720,000 are receiving ‘Burgergeld’ – or citizen’s benefits – which reportedly costs German taxpayers €539 million per month.

According to an analysis presented by the Federal Audit Office to the German parliament’s budget committee on Thursday and cited by the publication, “the job-centers’ mediation has accounted for less than one percent of recruitments [among refugees] registered in 2024.” The report is said to have cited “considerable deficiencies in job-centers’ integration efforts” as part of the reason for the low efficiency.

Launched last October by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, the ‘Job Turbo’ initiative was touted at the time as a way to accelerate the transition of refugees “from the integration course to the workplace.” Heil estimated that as many as 400,000 people, both from Ukraine and other nations, could be weaned off government handouts through the initiative.

The idea was to streamline the employment process with the help of counseling and early assessment of candidates’ qualifications.

However, as of June 2024, only 30% of Ukrainian refugees were employed, according to Stern – far below the figures seen in neighboring countries such as Denmark.

According to Stern, citing the Federal Audit Office’s conclusions, while the Job Turbo scheme envisages counseling, in practice, it has not been provided in around a third of the cases this year. This, in turn, has reportedly led to refugees increasingly dropping out of the integration courses.

Another problem highlighted by the auditors is that job centers have often been unable to secure basic information about their clients’ education, careers, skills, and German language proficiency, preventing individuals from being successfully integrated into the job market, according to the article.

Bild also reported that the auditors singled out the long waits for Ukrainians to be enrolled in the courses as a factor contributing to the overall inefficiency of the scheme.