Germany’s draft budget halves funding for integration courses

The federal government’s draft budget for 2027 contains massive cuts to integration courses — designed to help refugees and immigrants integrate and begin work in Germany — pushing the Interior Ministry’s austerity plans much further than expected, according to a new report by Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The headline figures: The budget for integration courses is set to be slashed nearly in half, from €1.1 billion down to €590 million.

It was already known that previously planned budget for integration courses would be cut significantly next year. But the new figure, as seen in government’s latest draft budget for 2027, is ten percent lower than had been previously discussed.

According to Germany’s Adult Education Association (Deutscher Volkshochschul-verband), this means that the integration courses are “not sufficiently financed either this year or next year”.

The Interior Ministry suggests that a little more money could be available for next year from “unspent funds” carried over from this year. But extra funding in this form would only be a temporary solution at best.

Migration policy shifts

Other changes in the draft budget signal that federal authorities are not only interested saving money, but that government is pursuing a broader tightening of Germany’s immigration policy.

Funding for independent procedural advice for asylum seekers is also being gutted, dropping from €24.5 million this year down to €5 million for 2027.

Conversely, the government is expanding funding for people who decide to leave, dedicating €125 million to a new program titled, “Supplementary Programmes for the Promotion of Voluntary Departure and Reintegration”.

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Germany is ‘destroying its best instrument for integration’

The Adult Education Association warns that with the planned budget cut, the conservative-led Interior Ministry “is pushing ahead with the dismantling of integration courses and risks systematically destroying one of the most successful integration instruments.”

As The Local has reported, this year Germany’s federal authorities have taken a series of actions that have resulted in reduced access to integration courses for various groups of foreigners.

In February, it was reported that the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) quietly stopped approving applicants for integration courses since the start of December.

The Interior Ministry, under the leadership of Alexander Dobrindt of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), then confirmed that it planned to dramatically reduce access to the state-funded courses in order to cut costs. Specifically asylum seekers, war refugees from Ukraine and spouses arriving via family reunification were to be excluded.

In April it was revealed that nearly 30,000 applicants for integration courses were rejected in January and February alone.

Then in May, the Interior Ministry walked back its restrictions slightly — under a newly announced plan more applicants would once again be eligible for integration courses.

But under current plans quotas on courses would be capped and asylum seekers with temporary status would still largely be excluded. Now it seems funding is set to be cut even further than had been expected.

What about getting people into the workforce?

Experts have warned that cuts to integration courses threaten to severely worsen Germany’s economic outlook by exacerbating its acute labour shortage — already projected to exceed seven million skilled workers by 2035.

READ ALSO: ‘Short-sighted’  – Cutting access to integration courses in Germany doesn’t make sense

German language skills are a vital prerequisite for most jobs in Germany, so limiting access to low-cost language and integration courses will prevent, or at least slow down, motivated immigrants from filling critical vacancies in struggling sectors like healthcare, elderly care, and the skilled trades.

Political pushback

The government’s current planned budget being a draft, there is still a chance that the above figures could be adjusted before it is approved.

Efforts by the conservatives to cut back integration courses have become a sore spot for Germany federal coalition government, comprised of the centre-right Christian Union (CDU/CSU) parties and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

In their coalition agreement, negotiated following the last federal election in February 2025, the Union parties demanded certain immigration tightening measures — including enforced rejection of asylum seekers at the border, and the outsourcing of asylum procedures to third countries. 

In exchange, the SPD had demanded investment in efforts to better integrate immigrants who legally remain. A line in the corresponding agreement read: “We want to invest more in integration, continue integration courses.”

“If you want to have more people in work, you have to advocate for integration courses,” SPD politician Hakan Demir told Süddeutsche Zeitung. “We will therefore fight for every euro and find compromises until November.”