Germany to expect 750000 refugees in 2015

Europe has been facing an unprecedented migrant crisis because of refugees fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.

“We need an European Refugees Commissioner”, Mueller told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper.

Berlin had projected some 450,000 asylum seekers would arrive in Germany in 2015 but has now revised that estimate to 650,000 or higher, the BBC reports.

Thomas Oppermann, parliamentary leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, the junior coalition partner, said he expects 700,000 to 800,000 arrivals this year.

EU border agency Frontex said the number of migrants surpassed the 100,000 mark in a single month for the first time since it began keeping records in 2008. Many undertake dangerous sea voyages to reach Southern Europe, then make their way across the continent in the hope of reaching wealthier nations like Germany.

Last month, EU member states agreed to take in 32,000 asylum seekers arriving in Italy and Greece over the next two years. Chancellor Angela Merkel has tried to address fears among some voters that migrants will eat up taxpayers’ money and take their jobs.

But that plan has also led to attacks against asylum seekers by “Germans troubled by the prospect of having to compete with refugees for state resources”, writes The Christian Science Monitor’s Chris Cottrell. Originally, the government predicted 300,000 this year, up from 200,000 in 2014.

Germany has seen a wave of migration from Syria and the Balkans.

German towns have been housing refugees in tent cities and converted gyms, but as tensions increase there has been a rise in attacks on asylum seekers.

In the EU, Sweden recorded the next biggest number of asylum applications in 2014 – 13 percent, although as a proportion in relation to its population size, the country is shouldering the biggest burden in the bloc.

Germany, as Europe’s biggest economy, has become refugees’ top destination, with one in three who arrived last year in the EU seeking asylum in the country.

“In the long term, it is not sustainable for only two EU countries – Germany and Sweden – to take in the majority of refugees with efficient asylum structures”, Antonio Guterres told German newspaper Die Welt on Tuesday, according to AFP.