The Administrative Court of Berlin has announced that Germany’s Foreign Ministry will face financial penalties if it continues to delay issuing visas to Afghans who have received promises of acceptance and transfer to Germany.
The court has ordered the Foreign Ministry to explain what measures it has taken to issue visas; otherwise, a penalty order will be issued.
According to the Welt newspaper, the court has already issued 20 similar emergency rulings emphasizing that the German government “is obligated to issue visas due to legal commitments arising from valid and irrevocable promises of acceptance.
” One of the complainants is a university law professor who has been waiting for months in Pakistan with 13 family members for German visas. The German Foreign Ministry had appealed some cases to the Berlin Higher Administrative Court, but in at least one case, the request to suspend the implementation of the ruling was rejected.
The federal government’s admission program, which began in October 2022, was designed to protect endangered Afghans and their families.
However, Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s new Interior Minister, suspended this program this spring. Currently, more than two thousand Afghans promised acceptance in Germany live in Pakistan, but their Pakistani visas have expired, putting them at risk of arrest and deportation.
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