Germany spent around 20 billion euros ($22.4 billion) on refugees in 2016, according to government figures released Wednesday.
More than half the money, 11 billion euros ($12.33 billion), went to curbing the flow of migrants to Europe. The remaining 9.3 billion euros (10.4 billion) was provided to Germany’s 16 states to assist migrants.
The actual total is likely higher as the figure doesn’t include money spent by individual states.
Germany has taken more than one million migrants over the past two years. Peter Altmaier, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, said the money appears to be well spent since the influx went down from 2015 to 2016.
“In the past year, we have seen the number of new arrivals coming over to Greece from Turkey dramatically reduced,” Altmaier told German newspaper Rheinische Post. “It also appears that the influx of migrants on the Libya-Italy route is falling rather going up. Our commitment to improving the situation in Libya, Mali and Niger appears to be paying off.”
A quarter of the money, 5.5 billion euros ($6.17 billion), went to supporting asylum seekers who were not yet recognized by the state. Another 2 billion euros ($2.24 billion) were spent on an integration program for new arrivals.
The government expects to spend 93.6 billion ($105 billion) on the refugee crisis by the end of 2020, according to a 2016 report. They expect that 55 percent of recognized refugees have a job after five years in the country.
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