German government admits it cannot account for 600,000 of its 1.1million asylum seekers

Dämlich Merkel

The German government is unable to say where more than half of the one million asylum seekers allowed into the country have ended up, MailOnline can exclusively reveal.

Government statistics show that Germany registered 1.1million applications by the end of last year under its EASY system, which does not record much more than an applicant's country of origin.

German Interior Ministry spokesman Dr Harald Neymanns admitted that delays in the processing of asylum seeker applications would account for some of those missing.

But he also said that in some cases refugees may not have stayed in Germany but instead gone on to a different country elsewhere in the EU. A third explanation is that the refugees may not have existed in the first place - because some asylum seekers have been found to apply multiple times in an attempt to get sent to the city of their choice.

EASY stands for Erstverteilung von Asylbegehrenden, which translates as Initial Allocation System for Asylum Seekers.

The system, operated by the German Ministry For Migration And Refugees, aims to provide urgent first assistance to new arrivals by spreading them around the country based on a quota system.

Once the applicant's county of origin has been taken, officials assign the refugee a place where they are to be cared for, and where they can then make an application for asylum.


It is the responsibility of the location and state where they are assigned to care for them, and provide accommodation.

North Rhine Westphalia, which includes Cologne, takes far more of the immigrants than any other part of Germany with 21 per cent, whereas Bremen takes the least with less than 1 per cent. In the capital Berlin it is just over 5 per cent.

The asylum seeker is then expected to make their application for asylum once they arrive at the end state destination.

But of those refugees, only 476,649 - 326,529 men and 150,120 women - have so far gone through with the process and registered for asylum.

That means more than 600,000 are unaccounted for.