In 2015 around 600,000 refugees are reported to have stayed in Germany, according to new official figures.
While a parliamentary answer to Die Linke (the Left Party) showed that at the end of 2015, there were 1.25 million refugees in Germany, the number includes 627,000 who were registered at the end of 2014.
Consequently, the number for 2015 was 623,000, TAZ newspaper reports.
The German interior ministry and the media have often cited the refugee arrivals in Germany as 1.1 million.
It has been reported that of the total, around 950,000 applications have been or are being processed, including those who are officially “tolerated” although their asylum applications have been rejected.
An additional 300,000 have yet to apply, largely because the government is finding it difficult to meet the challenge presented by the earlier applications.
The gap in the figures is likely to be down to the government’s registration system, Die Zeit reports, which records every arrival in Germany, including those who travel on to other countries.
In January the ministry admitted that the 1.1 million number could include repeated registrations in different states as well as those who subsequently left Germany for another country.
Sweden, for one, received 160,000 migrants last year, many of whom would have passed through Germany.
A number could have been registered twice as they moved around Germany and some, particularly economic migrants, may have used the country’s programme of financial assistance to return to their home countries.
Finland has been chartering flights to return migrants from Iraq for those who have changed their minds and decided to go back. Officials said in February that about 4,100 asylum seekers had cancelled their applications and they expected that figure to rise to about 5,000 in coming months. The majority have told authorities that they want to return to their families.
