According to a representative quoted in the report, due to the situation in that country, the BAMF announced on December 9 the immediate cessation of processing such requests.

Currently, said the department official, the situation in Damascus is unclear and it is difficult to predict its evolution, hence the complexity of taking serious decisions on the requests received.

The magazine indicated the existence of 47,270 unresolved asylum applications, including about 46,000 initial claims, although the new situation in Syria does not affect the existing decisions.

In this regard, a spokeswoman for the German Ministry of the Interior assured in a briefing that ‘BAMF closely monitors how each individual case is handled, which also includes an assessment of the situation on the ground in the country of origin’.

In addition to this, the federal agency has the ability to defer an asylum determination if the scenario is unclear, ‘in practice this means that Syrians’ applications are sorted and priority is given to other asylum decisions’.

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