Germany is expected to take in between 650,000 and 750,000 refugees in 2015, twice the earlier projections of 300,000, the German Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing sources in the government.
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The number of refugees arriving in Germany this year is set to rise to a record 750,000, significantly higher than the original forecast of 450,000.
Yet one-third of the refugees who reached the EU last year sought asylum in Germany, according to Deutsche Welle.
The former Portuguese prime minister also criticized the representation of refugees by several media outlets and even politicians as parasites wanting to take advantage of Europe’s prosperity. “In the long term, it is not sustainable for only two EU countries-Germany and Sweden-to take in the majority of refugees with efficient asylum structures”.
As the numbers of desperate people fleeing conflict and poverty in countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea shows no sign of letting up, the United Nations has urged European countries to do more to shoulder the burden.
Federal jobs agency head Frank-Juergen Weise has called on the government to increase funding to integrate migrants more quickly into the jobs market.
Sweden recorded the next biggest number of asylum applications in the EU in 2014 – 13 percent, although as a proportion in relation to its population size, the country is shouldering the biggest burden in the bloc.
But that plan has also led to attacks against asylum seekers by “Germans troubled by the prospect of having to compete with refugees for state resources”, writes The Christian Science Monitor’s Chris Cottrell.
Firecrackers were thrown at an asylum seekers’ hostel in Torgelow in the far north-east of Germany on Monday night. And thousands in towns and cities nearby have been holding demonstrations to protest the housing of asylum seekers in their areas, a trend they have referred to as the “Islamization of the West”.
His comments come after German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested immigration may become a larger problem for the EU than Greece’s debt crisis.
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More than 240,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean already this year, arriving on the shores of Greece and Italy before travelling on to other destinations.
