Head of Swiss municipalities warns of asylum system collapse

Head of Swiss municipal association warns of asylum system collapse Keystone-SDA

The director of the Swiss Association of Municipalities has warned of an impending collapse of the asylum system. In an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag, she emphasised that the situation in the municipalities remains extremely tense.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

A recent survey by the Association of Swiss Municipalities shows that 31% of municipalities cite the care of asylum-seekers as one of their main problems, said Claudia Kratochvil, director of the Association of Swiss Municipalities.

Many municipalities, cities and cantons no longer know where to accommodate the people, she said, explaining that the use of underground civil defence facilities was no longer an exception, but common practice. In addition, acceptance among the population is declining and the number of host families has fallen sharply, she said.

Another problem is the shortage of skilled worker, she said. “Qualified people to look after refugees are very difficult to find,” Kratochvil told the newspaper.

+ Asylum in Switzerland

Reduction in the integration allowance ‘not manageable’

The director also criticised the government for its austerity policy. The planned reduction of half a billion francs per year in the integration lump sum is “not manageable” and would have a massive impact on the budgets of the municipalities and cantons, she said.

The municipalities are already heavily burdened by the 22,000 pending asylum applications, she added. This includes around 17,000 people in the asylum procedure process and 5,000 people in the process for protection status S. “They are living in a holding pattern and are blocking places that are urgently needed,” Kratochvil said.

+ Swiss asylum seeker numbers sinking – including Ukrainians

She called on the federal government to quickly reduce the pending cases and to conclusively examine applications in the federal asylum centers. In addition, more resources are urgently needed to speed up procedures. She also criticized the lack of communication in connection with the closure of nine temporary federal asylum centers. The municipalities and cantons had been inadequately informed.

Despite the tense situation, Kratochvil also sees progress. The municipalities are now more closely involved in the “overall asylum strategy” and a national asylum summit is planned for the fall in order to create more efficiency between the federal government, cantons and municipalities.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].