Sluggish reimbursement of costs by the Free State to local authorities

The municipalities in Saxony are waiting for the Free State to pay millions of euros in costs for the accommodation and care of unaccompanied refugee minors. In mid-September, invoices for around 75 million euros were still outstanding across Saxony, according to an answer from Social Affairs Minister Petra Köpping (SPD) to a minor question from the Greens in the state parliament.

The city of Leipzig has outstanding claims of almost 15 million euros, in Dresden the figure is 6.2 million euros and in Chemnitz just under 3.7 million euros. The municipal youth welfare offices are responsible for the accommodation and care of unaccompanied minor refugees. However, the costs are to be borne by the federal and state governments.

Greens call for faster processing

"The lack of payments is hitting youth welfare services, which have long been working at their limits anyway, hard," explained the Greens' youth policy spokesperson, Christin Melcher. However, the state parliament's budget and finance committee has now decided that the money can be paid out. In future, invoices should be paid within a maximum of 90 days, the Greens demanded.

The Ministry of Social Affairs justified the payment arrears with the fact that more unaccompanied minor refugees have arrived since spring 2022. As a result, more applications for cost reimbursement from the municipalities have accumulated. In the meantime, more staff had been temporarily assigned to the state youth welfare office in order to be able to process the outstanding invoices from 2024 and 2025 by next March. After that, digitalization should help to process the reimbursements more quickly.