What is the best way to integrate the many refugees arriving in Germany, into society as well as the labor market? The draft ‘law on integration’ termed as ‘historic’ on 14 April, is intended to provide the answers to what will become, over the months and years to come, an increasingly important question for Germany’s economic actors. On Thursday 14 April, following tough negotiations, the three heads of the coalition government, Angela Merkel (CDU), Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), and Horst Seehofer (CSU), presented to the press the main thrusts of the draft law that the Council of Ministers is scheduled to adopt on 24 May.
A law on integration, a ‘legal duty’. For Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD head, “this is an historic step” and for Angela Merkel it is quite simply proof that for the first time the Federal State is finally holding the question of integration as ‘a legal duty’. “This is a first in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany,” she underlined. This was how at midday on Thursday 14 April both heads of the political parties as well as the head of the Bavarian wing of the Conservative party, presented the results of their seven hours of summit meeting negotiations, in particular presenting the main points of the upcoming draft law on integration.
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