Bavaria may house overflow of refugees in Oktoberfest beer tents
By Madeline Chambers
BERLIN (Reuters) - Bavaria may house refugees in Oktoberfest beer festival tents as an influx of people fleeing war in Syria has stretched facilities to the limit, a leading newspaper said on Wednesday, highlighting a growing problem for Germany's central government.
The prosperous German state's ruling conservatives, part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's bloc, worry that more support is seeping away to new rightist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and many blame the recent surge in refugee numbers.
Germany has the largest number of refugees and asylum-seekers in the European Union and net immigration is at its highest in two decades. Local governments complain they lack the facilities to cope and many residents are angry about the cost.
In September, asylum claims in Europe's biggest economy jumped 39 percent from a year ago to 19,043, driven by arrivals from Syria, interior ministry data released on Wednesday showed. For the year so far, applications are up almost 60 percent.
Bureaucratic bottlenecks mean more than 2,000 asylum seekers are waiting to be registered in Munich. With barracks already full, many are sleeping outside. Facing a popular outcry at TV pictures of trainloads of refugees pouring onto Munich station, the Bavarian government has set up an "asylum task force".
"We have problems with this question," Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer said this week. "We will not overcome this challenge if we wear party political spectacles. There must be joint action by the federal, state and local government."
Authoritative Munich newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, said authorities may also using the city's Olympic stadium as temporary accommodation for refugees and asylum-seekers.
No one at Bavaria's government offices was immediately available to comment.
Until now, immigration has rarely featured as a big election issue compared with countries such as France and Britain but the rise of the AfD may change that.
Launched last year as an anti-euro party, it has homed in on asylum, helping it to win seats in three state votes and gain national ratings of about 8 percent.
"The right to political asylum...has become an uncontrolled right to immigration and to stay for an almost unlimited time. It is understandable if people oppose this officially tolerated abuse," AfD spokesman Konrad Adam said this month.
(Editing by Stephen Brown and Louise Ireland)
