Staff Reports
Björn Harms just dropped a fiscal bomb. In a new investigation and a guest piece in Die Welt, he says Germany’s asylum and migration system has cost taxpayers at least €400 billion. That is his conservative number. It demands answers. Voters deserve clarity. So do taxpayers.
Harms’ bombshell: €400 billion and counting
Harms says he built his total by asking ministries, states and every district for their spending figures. He calls it a conservative minimum. He credits about €242 billion to the federal budget and more than €100 billion to state and local governments, plus other costs like health and schooling. Harms also points to roughly 4,437 taxpayer-funded accommodations housing nearly 295,000 people in his snapshot. Those are big, specific claims. They must be checked. But they also demand a political response.
Where the money went
Key numbers and examples
The large share is for housing and emergency accommodation, Harms says. He highlights long, costly leases and conversions of public buildings. One example is a multi-year Berlin lease to hold asylum seekers that runs into the millions. Another is a municipal firm in Hamburg whose profits and staff grew by large margins after 2015. Those details should make anyone who pays taxes sit up. If money flows into hotels, operators, and local companies, someone is profiting. And it is the taxpayer who picks up the tab.
The rise of the “asylum industry”
Harms calls it an “asylum complex.” That’s blunt, but not wrong. Empty hotels became cash cows. Local firms and municipal companies build whole business models on state guarantees. When a policy creates a market, that market will find ways to protect itself. The question is whether politicians who opened the gates have any plan to unwind the incentives they created. Hint: promises are cheap. Contracts and leases are expensive.
Political consequences and who pays
Many trace the turning point to Merkel’s “We can do it” moment in 2015. Whether you agree with that policy or not, the fiscal trail now runs through three levels of government. Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his ministers have said they want to cut costs. But Harms warns much of the spending is already locked in for years. That means voters will feel this in budgets for a long time if nothing changes.
What must change next
Conservative common sense says audit, transparency, and incentives that favor honest integration over bureaucratic rent-seeking. Harms has given officials a map of the money. Now those officials should publish the source spreadsheets and explain line by line what was spent and why. Germany needs tighter controls on long leases, clearer rules for municipal firms, and a plan to stop turning crises into permanent business models. Taxpayers deserve better than open-ended bills and polite excuses. It’s time for real fiscal accountability on migration spending.
