Eilenburg closes asylum home: City council decides with a short majority!

Eilenburg closes asylum home: City council decides with a short majority!

Eilenburg, Deutschland - Eilenburg, a city with 16,500 inhabitants, decided on Monday evening a significant step in local asylum policy. The city council decided with 10 to 8 votes (3 abstentions) the closure of the asylum home on Schanzenberg on the end of 2025. This decision was supported by the factions of the AfD, the Free Saxony and a locally active citizens' initiative, while the established parties, also as a cartel parties, advocated further operation. The request of the CDU and free voters was particularly striking to apply for a secret coordination in order to avoid public approval to the home.

This closure is seen as a success of patriotic local politics. of course reports that an application from the district to continue the community accommodation for asylum seekers beyond December 31, 2025. This makes a clear direction in the local political discussion on migration policy.

overarching in Saxony there is a growing resentment about migration policy. An asylum emergency has already been proclaimed in other cities, such as Aue-Bad Schlema. The city council in Aue-Bad Schlema unanimously decided to protest further allocations of migrants, which illustrates the tense conditions in the region. Compact-Online emphasizes that these developments are part of a larger trend: The debate about migration and integration is still of high relevance in Syria.

The numbers underline this problem. In 2024 there were around 251,000 asylum applications in Germany, with the numbers being reduced by about 29 percent compared to the previous year. Nevertheless, the public discussion on asylum applications remains highly topical. According to surveys, which were carried out in September 2024, 77 percent of those surveyed require a turn in migration policy, and the need for changes is also noticeable among the followers of established parties.

political accents and reactions

The AfD benefited from the current debate and achieved over 30 percent of the votes in the state elections in Thuringia and Saxony. The party received 20.8 percent in the 2025 federal election. This shift to the right correlates with increasing skepticism towards the federal government, which tried to react to the situation with legislative initiatives. On numerous occasions, such as in January 2024, new laws to improve the returns of rejected asylum seekers were discussed. A recently carried out survey shows that 32 percent of the population believes that the federal government could deport more rejected asylum seekers.

The discussion is supplemented by the European perspective, since the EU decided in December 2023 to tighten the asylum rules in order to reduce pressure on Member States such as Italy and Greece. The asylum system is therefore not only in Germany, but also across Europe. Statista informed that around one million for the first time in the EU was registered in Germany, of which 31 percent were looking for refuge in Germany.

The closure of the Eilenburg asylum home is therefore a microcosm for a global phenomenon: migration and integration are among the most discussed social issues in Germany. It remains to be seen whether and how these topics are perceived in political practice.