Number of staff and nature of the first instance authority

Source: Information provided by the BAMF, up to date as of 26 February 2025.

The BAMF is responsible for examining applications for international protection and competent to take decisions at first instance.

The BAMF has branch offices in all Federal States. As of November 2024, the BAMF website lists a total of 58 branch offices (Außenstelle) and one Head Office in Nuremberg.[1] The branch offices process the asylum procedures, but also carry out additional tasks (for instance, they function as contact points for authorities and organisations active in the integration of foreign nationals, while some branch offices work exclusively on Dublin cases). Branch offices are assigned specific countries of origin, whereas the main countries of origin are processed in the majority of branch offices.[2] In cooperation with the Federal States, the BAMF manages a distribution system for asylum seekers known as Initial Distribution of Asylum Seekers (Erstverteilung der Asylbegehrenden, EASY) system, which allocates places according to a quota system known as “Königsteiner Schlüssel” (see Asylum Act). The quota is based on the size and the economic strength of the Federal States in which the centres are located. Furthermore, the system takes into account which branch office of the BAMF deals with an asylum seeker’s country of origin.

As of 1 January 2025, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees employed 9,241 individuals (excluding temporary staff).[3] Of these, 6,395 worked full-time, 2,387 part-time, and 459 were on long-term leave.[4] This represents an increase from 2023, when the BAMF had approximately 8,100 employees.[5]

In 2024, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees received a significant budget increase to address the rising number of asylum applications. The total increase in funding amounts to € 295 million, aimed at expanding personnel and enhancing digital infrastructure to accelerate asylum processing.[6]

Budget allocations include:

• Personnel expenses for officers at BAMF have risen by €16.8 million to a total of € 250.91 million.
• Funding for temporary asylum decision-makers and support staff has increased by € 64.96 million, reaching €121.16 million.
• Employee wages at BAMF rose by €6.88 million to €196.58 million, while operational expenses increased by €27.24 million to €65.59 million.
• Training expenses grew by €3.4 million to €7.53 million, and IT infrastructure funding has been boosted by €80 million, totalling €117.75 million.

In March 2024, the BAMF which at that point employed around 8,000 staff members announced an increase in positions.[7] In response to the high demand, the BAMF announced that 1,160 new positions would be added, representing a nearly 15% increase in workforce.[8] These roles include 343 permanent positions and 817 temporary roles, with some contracts capped at two years. The new positions were distributed across BAMF’s various locations in Germany to offer local employment opportunities.[9]

The BAMF also has special representatives for Security in the Asylum Procedure (Sonderbeauftragte für Sicherheit im Asylverfahren). According to the BAMF, they provide the interface to the Operative Security Division and the Policy Division on Security, coordinate security-related asylum proceedings and are points of contact within their divisions for questions and problems relating to proceedings with a potentially security-related background. In this context, they also raise awareness among other case officers so that they can clarify security-relevant facts comprehensively during the asylum interview by means of appropriate enquiries. In relevant cases, they check the determined facts for security-relevant criteria and process all asylum proceedings in which exclusion grounds have to be considered. In special cases, they also conduct the asylum interview. In addition to these special representatives, there are special representatives for various groups of vulnerable persons in the asylum procedure. All special representatives are asylum case officers who, after an additional qualification, perform additional tasks in the asylum procedure.[10]

Quality

The quality of BAMF asylum decisions has been much debated in recent years given the high number of appeals filed at the courts, but also because of “scandals” which prompted extensive media coverage in 2017 and 2018.[11] This was related, in part, to the high increase in personnel in 2015 and 2016 – likely due to the spike in asylum applications – accompanied by shortened training phases, with some decision-makers not having received relevant training. As a result, the BAMF has undertaken several changes to the training provided to decision-makers and to the quality assurance procedures since 2017. According to the BAMF, the challenges in 2015 and 2016 were mainly due to a sharp increase in the number of decisions required. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees stresses that the quality assurance in asylum procedures is based on various instruments and objectives. Core elements include quality checks of individual procedural steps using the four-eye principle and set quotas and criteria. This occurs both decentralised in branch offices, where key steps like file creation, interviews, decisions, and revocation/withdrawal procedures are reviewed using standardised checklists, and centrally through representative sample checks of randomly selected cases. According to the BAMF, this approach aims at identifying systemic errors and implement corrective measures. Additionally, topic-specific sample checks focus on certain case types or countries of origin, offering deeper insights into areas needing improvement.[12]

Randomly selected cases are subject to a more thorough quality control by the BAMF’s quality assurance division. In addition, the BAMF also has a division for ‘Operative management of asylum procedures and integration’ which ‘analyses developments and trends so that it is possible to recognise and react to a need to act for management at an early date’, according to the BAMF.[13] In particular, the decision-making practices of the different branch offices are monitored and branch offices with significant deviations from the overall protection rates are asked to provide further information on the treated cases to the BAMF headquarters.[14] The results of this monitoring and the case outcomes are not made public by the BAMF automatically, but are regularly requested and published through parliamentary inquiries.[15]

[1] BAMF, Locations, available at: https://bit.ly/3dFTd8w.

[2] A list of all countries of origin and the allocated branch offices is available on the website of the Refugee Council of Lower Saxony (up to date as of March 20221): https://bit.ly/3WJ0eg1.

[3] Information provided by the BAMF, up to date as of 26 February 2025.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community, ‘Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge’, available in German at: https://bit.ly/3qTH0qt.

[6] Information provided by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees on 28 May 2025.

[7] Stanislaus Kossakowski, ‚Nach Faesers Ankündigung: BAMF stockt Personal bereits auf‘, (BR24, 6 March 2023), available in German here.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Information provided by the BAMF on 28 May 2025.

[11] For more detailed information, see AIDA, Country Report Germany – Update on the year 2019, July 2020, available at: https://bit.ly/34so09M, 20-21.

[12] Information provided by the BAMF on 28 May 2025.

[13] BAMF, Procedure management and quality assurance, 28 November 2018, available at: http://bit.ly/3DxsTgJ.

[14] Federal Government, Response to information request by The Left, 20/12228, 08 April June 2024, available in German here.

[15] See for the second half of 2022: Federal Government, Response to parliamentary question by The Left 20/8222, 5 September 2023, available in German at: https://bit.ly/3SklJCR, 12-13.