Chancellor Merkel enters 'Germans only' food bank furore

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the latest politician to criticise a major food bank's decision to bar foreigners from receiving free food.

The charity Essener Tafel called it a temporary restriction necessary because the share of foreigners using the food bank had soared to 75% in recent years.

The charity says it helps about 16,000 poor people in Essen, a city in the western industrial Ruhr region.

Vandals have sprayed "Nazis" on the charity's delivery vans.

Mrs Merkel spoke out against Essener Tafel's new rule requiring visitors to show a German passport in order to receive food.

"One shouldn't run services on the basis of such categorisations. That's not good. But it also shows the amount of pressure there is, and how many people are needy. That's why I hope they can find good solutions which do not exclude groups," she told the broadcaster RTL.

Migrant influx

An estimated 1.2 million asylum seekers entered Germany during the migrant crisis of 2015-2016, more than half from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The record influx boosted support for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Essener Tafel is part of a national food bank group called Tafel. Essen is part of Germany's old coal-and-steel hub in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) state.

The far-right AfD defended the charity's policy on Facebook (in German), saying "if you fight back, you're a Nazi".

Like hundreds of other German food banks, Essener Tafel collects tonnes of surplus food at or past its sell-by date, which would otherwise be thrown away.

The charity's managers are holding an emergency meeting now to tackle the row over its new policy, which took effect last month.

Essener Tafel head Jörg Sartor spoke angrily about the criticism. "A load of politicians are laying into us now - but they are ill-informed. They ought to reciprocate and help out here - after that they can voice an opinion, by all means."

He defended his staff and said he was "sick and tired" of the criticism. "I'm almost ready to quit," he said.

Earlier, he said the restriction had nothing to do with xenophobia; he said it was all about fairness, because large numbers of elderly women and single mothers had stopped coming to Essener Tafel.

Data from Germany's national migration agency BAMF shows that NRW has the highest number of asylum claims among the German states.

In January NRW handled 19.9% of claims, followed by Bavaria (15.1%).

Asylum claims in Germany soared to a record 745,545 in 2016, but fell back to 222,683 in 2017.

A new EU border agreement with Turkey, and new border fences, drastically cut the numbers of migrants heading to Central Europe via the Balkan route.

Citation: 

“Chancellor Merkel Enters 'Germans Only' Food Bank Furore.” BBC News, BBC, 27 Feb. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43210596.

Response:

I came into this article with some bias that made me react very strongly to the requirement of being of a certain race to obtain aid. Although I recognize some of the reasons behind the decision, I still think that it is appalling that someone would be refused aid based on their ethnicity (even to the point of having to prove it with a passport). I believe that the author's purpose with this article was to raise awareness about the need for more aid across the board so that everyone can be supported. The migrant crisis is very severe right now and there seems to be too many people without enough help. I definitely do not believe that the solution is to block out certain people from receiving aid altogether, however. I think that people need to work together instead of reacting in such extreme ways such as calling each other "Nazis." The audience of this article is probably the lower to middle class of European nations that can identify with the issue at hand and possibly help in some way. The article would probably resonate most with this population.