A motion proposed by the right-wing Alternative for Germany to give asylum seekers payment cards instead of cash in the state of Saxony passed by a single vote after a left-wing lawmaker went for “a joint” and missed the vote.
The move was debated by the Dresden city council on Friday, with anti-mass migration councilors calling on the city to switch to topped-up cards to prevent asylum seekers from spending taxpayer-funded cash benefits in the black market on drugs and prostitution.
After many hours of debate, and ahead of the vote at 6 p.m., left-wing councilor Max Aschenbach announced on his X account that he was “going for a joint” and subsequently missed the crucial vote.
Around 15 minutes later, he returned to the chamber and posted: “Just came back up and everyone is bullying me because the stupid AfD payment card application was passed with the votes of the CDU and FDP.”
The motion succeeded by a single vote with 53 in favor to 52 against.
An inquest is now underway among the co-governing FDP party and the opposition CDU as to why local lawmakers voted in solidarity with the AfD motion, with the long-standing practice being that Germany’s mainstream parties do not support AfD motions.
CDU leader Freidrich Merz said the decision to support the motion was “correct in substance but unacceptable in procedure.”
“That was a mistake. And we will talk to those affected about everything else,” he added.
The topic of migrant payment cards has made national headlines in recent weeks as Germany attempts to clamp down on the misuse of taxpayer-funded benefits and lessen the pull factors for the latest influx of new arrivals into the country.
Last month, the Free Democrats (FDP) even warned that they could pull out of the three-way left-liberal government if the Green party blocked a new rule mandating benefit cards instead of cash payments to migrants.
Local municipalities across the country have already introduced laws stipulating that benefits must be paid via payment cards instead of cash, but this contravenes existing federal law, namely the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act, which states that migrants should receive payments “primarily as a cash benefit.”
Plans to amend the law to move towards a cashless system are underway to ensure that funds stay off the black market and remain in the country, preventing migrants from sending cash back home and taking it out of the German economy.