Last year, fewer foreigners moved to Germany than in previous years. For the first time, the number of Croats who immigrated was also lower than the number of Croats who returned home from Germany.

Milan also returned from Germany after a full 11 years. He moved his family and construction company to his hometown of Imotski.

“It is definitely final, I miss my homeland, Imotski, Zagreb and I want to be here now. Croatia has not improved as much as Germany is collapsing. Salaries have increased by 10 to 15 percent, and everything has become abnormally more expensive,” Milan Katanušić says for RTL.

Marija does not want to return from Germany

Among the Croats in Germany is Marija from Zagreb, who has been living in Munich for 10 years and plans to stay there. Alongside her job in finance, she also developed a mobile application with colleagues containing advice for those who are arriving.

“I finished university here, started a family, launched two businesses. If someone had asked me 10 years ago where I would be, I could not have said with certainty that it would be Germany,” says Marija Šimić.

“There are still people in Germany, but many cannot even live there on a German pension, so it is a little easier for them here,” says Katanušić.

For the first time in 10 years, more Croats emigrated from Germany than immigrated to it

Last year, far fewer foreigners moved to Germany than in previous years, and for the first time the number of Croatian citizens who immigrated there also fell, the Federal Statistical Office announced. “Germany recorded a decline in the number of immigrants last year. While 2,665,772 foreigners arrived in Germany in 2022, last year that number amounted to 1,932,509,” the statement from the Federal Statistical Office says.

At the same time, given that 1,269,545 foreigners emigrated from Germany, the net number of immigrants fell to 662,964, which is a noticeable drop compared with 2022, when the net number of immigrants was 1,462,089. 

This decline is primarily linked to the record number of refugees from Ukraine who moved to Germany during 2022, and whose number fell noticeably in 2023.

For the first time since Croatia joined the European Union, in 2023 more Croatian citizens emigrated from Germany than moved there. Thus, last year 20,604 Croatian citizens moved to Germany, which is the lowest number since 2013, when Croatia was admitted to the EU. Last year 24,241 Croatian citizens emigrated from Germany, which means that in 2023 the number of Croatian citizens living in Germany fell by 3,637.

At the end of 2023, a total of 434,035 Croatian citizens were living in Germany. Several years earlier, in 2016, 332,605 Croatian citizens were registered in Germany.

Large growth in immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey

The same trend is also noticeable among other newer members of the European Union, such as Romania and Bulgaria, where the number of migrants to Germany has been in constant decline over the past five years. At the same time, the number of immigrants from Kosovo and North Macedonia is slightly increasing, countries whose immigration was enabled under the so-called Western Balkans labor force rule from 2016.

A significant increase is being recorded among immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey, whereby this is not labor migration, like that of residents of the Western Balkans countries, but asylum applicants.

Source: poslovni.hr