Germany will not go broke as a result of the ongoing migrant crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly podcast to the nation Saturday.
“We cannot simply say: Because we have a difficult task, a balanced budget or the deficit issue no longer plays a role,” Merkel said, stressing that a healthy economy means greater capacity for communities to provide care and accommodation.
The country’s financial minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, has been crunching numbers to ensure that the cost of accommodating the growing number of migrants and refugees arriving in Germany can be absorbed into the budget.
He plans to set aside a €5.7bn surplus ($6.4bn) in a supplementary budget, according to reports in the Spiegel, in order to keep the country’s finances in the black well into 2016.
Merkel described accepting and integrating refugees into German society as a “job for the nation.”
German Politicians are to decide at the meeting on Sunday how much money should be made available to regional and local governments as they struggle to cope with unprecedented numbers of people travelling to Germany to seek asylum.