Germany expecting record 750,000 refugees this year

The number of refugees arriving in Germany this year is set to rise to a record 750,000, significantly higher than the original forecast of 450,000.

German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported that the number of refugees seeking accommodation across Germany was surging, and it quoted Stuttgart Integration Minister Bilkay Oeney as saying that he would have to build a block of flats a day to accommodate the influx of arrivals.

Germany, the biggest recipient of asylum seekers in the EU, has witnessed a wave of migration from war and poverty stricken countries such as Syria, Iraq and Eritrea. Last month alone, 5,700 people applied for asylum in the northern city of Hamburg and 7,065 in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

EU member states agreed last month to relocate 32,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece over the next two years.  

However, 240,000 migrants have already crossed the Mediterranean this year, arriving on the shores of Greece and Italy before travelling to other European destinations. The UN estimates that over 21,000 migrants have arrived in Greece in the past week alone.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said that Germany and Sweden – the second highest European recipient of asylum seekers – cannot be expected to shoulder the burden by themselves.

"It is unsustainable in the long run that only two EU countries, Germany and Sweden, take in the majority of refugees," Guterres told German daily Die Welt.

The influx in arrivals has been accompanied by rising tensions. Germany saw 150 arson attacks on refugee shelters in the first six months of the year, nearly as many as in the whole of 2014. Most attacks have taken place in former Communist eastern states.

Firecrackers were tossed at an asylum seekers' hostel in Torgelow in the far north-east of Germany on Monday night. Elsewhere in the east of the country, thousands of people have marched in protest against asylum seekers being housed in their areas and what they call the “Islamisation of the West”.

Federal jobs agency head Frank-Juergen Weise has called on the government to increase funding to integrate migrants more quickly into the jobs market.

EU member states agreed last month to relocate 32,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece over the next two years.