Ten-point plan against social fraud: Bas speaks of “mafia-like structures”

dpa | The federal government wants to combat abuse of social benefits more effectively with a ten-point plan. It should be implemented by the end of the year, according to the action plan available to the German Press Agency. The Bild newspaper first reported on it.

As already announced in the coalition agreement, incentives to immigrate to the social systems should be reduced. Large-scale abuse of social benefits should be stopped. Exploitative business models with so-called junk properties should be combated more effectively. Basic security should be ended if someone is wanted with an enforceable arrest warrant.

The plan was developed by the Ministry of Social Affairs under department head Bärbel Bas (SPD) and the interior department of Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), as it was said. Bas said: “We enable municipalities to take better action against so-called junk properties.” Those behind organized exploitation would be held more accountable.

For Germany, with its need for foreign skilled workers, the opportunity to take up work across borders in the EU without bureaucracy is very important, explained Bas. “But what is not possible is to exploit freedom of movement to exploit people and exploit their distress for organized abuse.”

Dobrindt told the world: “We have succeeded in agreeing a tough plan of action against abuse of social benefits with the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs – we are taking a clear stance against social fraudsters.” In the future, only EU foreigners who have legally resided in Germany for five years will receive social benefits, the minister announced.

Bas said data exchange would be improved and loopholes would be closed. The Federal Employment Agency will be strengthened and employers will be held liable in the case of undeclared work.

In June, the federal and state interior ministers decided to take more consistent action against gang-related social abuse. The background is primarily cases in which gangs brought EU citizens from southeastern Europe to Germany and put them in fictitious employment so that they could gain access to social benefits as extras. The focus is on Bulgaria and Romania, for example.

Some of these people were housed in so-called junk properties. This problem has been known for a long time in many municipalities in the Ruhr area, for example. There are also raids by police and other authorities. But the authorities have often been able to do relatively little about it.

In individual federal states there is now more cooperation between the police, family funds, job centers, immigration authorities, municipalities and other relevant bodies in order to prevent such abuse, as the states say. According to changes to the building code introduced by the federal government, municipalities should also be able to expropriate junk properties in extreme cases.

In an interview in the middle of last year, Bas had already announced stricter measures against social abuse and referred to negative examples from her hometown of Duisburg. There are “exploitative structures that lure people from other European countries to Germany and offer them mini-work contracts,” she said at the time. "At the same time, they let these people apply for citizen's money and then skim off the state funds themselves. These are mafia-like structures that we have to dismantle."

The action plan now also stipulates that immigrants from EU countries with extremely low levels of employment should no longer be able to receive regular top-up benefits. The municipalities' resources against junk properties are to be strengthened - the plan lists the key words: "repair requirements, right of first refusal, expropriation, ban on use".