Cologne investigates allegations that its abroad affairs office in 2024 did not usage the aid of the Land with papers for about 500 people from the Western Balkans without the right of residence. The case strikes the credibility of German migration policy: the law only makes sense erstwhile the state enforces it.
List of Coesfeld and Colony Decision
Cologne was under force after reports of a alleged letter from Coesfeld. It is about 500 people from the Western Balkan countries who were expected to be under the work to leave in Cologne, but remained in Germany, among another things, due to the deficiency of travel documents. How revealed Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, Zentrale Ausländerbehörde in Coesfeld offered in November 2024 assistance in obtaining the replacement papers needed to return.
According to these findings, the office in Cologne did not take advantage of the offer. The answer was to go the another way: alternatively of preparing return, local officials wanted to support those who had been tolerated for years in obtaining a lasting possible of residence. We wrote earlier that Cologne has resigned to return 500 migrants without residence. fresh reports show that the substance is not extinguishing, but it is becoming a symbol of the deeper illness of the German system.
Nor does the Green Minister realize this decision
The issue is so crucial that criticism has besides come from a direction that cannot be easy removed as a right-wing exaggeration. Verena Schäffer, the Green Minister for Refugees and Integration in North Rhine-Westphalia, criticised Cologne's proceedings. How reported WDR, the Coesfeld office confirmed that Cologne did not accept Land support on return documents.
Schäffer pointed out that she could not realize giving up assistance with papers for Western Balkan people. According to the DPA message cited by WELT, the Minister besides recalled the simple and basic principle: if there is no longer any reason for further tolerance of the stay, the enforceable work to leave must be fulfilled. This conviction should be evident in all state of law. In today's Germany, however, it sounds like an intervention in order towards its own administration.
Duldung cannot be the back door to stay
The German concept of duldung means to tolerate residence despite the existing work to leave the country. specified construction may make sense in individual cases: deficiency of documents, illness, legal obstacle, household situation. The problem begins erstwhile the exception turns into practice and practice into politics. Then the citizen hears: the decision has been made, but the state's camera refuses to execute it.
Here's the stakes. Migration policy without enforcement becomes an invitation to circumvent the rules. The costs are borne by taxpayers, local governments and local communities, who must keep a strategy of benefits, housing, schools, translators, control and intervention of services. Germany has taught Europe a moralist speech over the years, and now they show themselves what a country that has procedures but loses its will to act.
Numbers show the scale of the problem
According to Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger in late 2025, there were 3657 foreigners surviving in Cologne with a tolerated stay. Nearly 800 people stayed in Germany for over 8 years and almost 900 more than 10 years. 245 people were deported from Cologne in 2025, including 130 perpetrators. These numbers do not prejudge the destiny of all individual on the Coesfeld list, but show how large the difference is between the recipe and the real execution of the decision.
MiGazin points out that the work to leave does not always mean the immediate anticipation of deportation, due to the fact that each case requires a separate legal assessment. This reservation is important. However, it does not change the heart of the dispute: the Land State offered concrete assistance to remove 1 of the barriers, and the municipal office was to answer that it wanted to build a way of residence. It's no longer a method delay. It's a political choice in the language of administration.
Lesson for Poland
Poland cannot repeat a German error. We have the right to aid those in need, we have the right to separate cases, we have the work to treat people with dignity. But a country that ceases to enforce its own decisions is undermining citizens' confidence. On migration issues, trust is simply a strategical capital: it concerns street security, household portfolios and border control.
The German example should be a informing for Warsaw. In Poland, there is already a dispute over whether deportations are to be a real tool of the state or just a slogan from a press conference. This is besides shown by our texts about deportations from Poland grow according to the Ministry of abroad Affairs data. Tough country doesn't should be violent. It must be consistent. If the decision to leave exists only on paper, the paper begins to regulation citizens alternatively of the state.
Source: Junge Freiheit, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, WDR, Deutschlandfunk, WELT/DPA.
Source: Junge Freiheit
