OECD expects record immigration to Germany due to Ukraine war

The war in Ukraine is expected to lead to the highest immigration to Germany since reunification.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced on Monday, the number of immigrants by the end of the year is expected to be higher than in 2015, when more than 2.1 million people came to Germany within a year, mainly as a result of the civil war in Syria.

In the current year, the Federal Statistical Office registered more than 1.8 million arrivals in Germany from February to August alone, including about 952,000 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian war.

Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser wants to meet representatives of municipal umbrella organizations on Tuesday to discuss a better distribution of refugees in Germany.

The OECD's latest migration report speaks of a historic mass exodus as a result of the Russian attack.

According to the report, around 5 million people fled from Ukraine to the OECD countries by mid-September alone. With almost 1 million refugees, Germany is the most important receiving country in the OECD after Poland.

The organization, headquartered in Paris, is an association of 38 industrialized nations. It regularly researches immigration to its member countries; in addition to the EU states, these include the US, Canada and Japan.

According to the researchers, the reception and integration of Ukrainians in Germany has worked much better than during the refugee crisis of 2015.