«Zofingen (AG): Reception of refugees from the Moria camp»

Attendance

19.10.20: In an interpellation, the SP demands the admission of refugees from the (new) Moria camp on Lesbos.

“The city council of Zofingen is asked to answer the following questions

• Is the city council prepared to take in 9 refugees from Moria? If not, why not?
• Is the town council prepared to call on the canton and the federal government to take the necessary measures to enable the reception of refugees from Moria? If not, why not?
• Is the city council prepared to coordinate with the cities and municipalities in the canton of Aargau as well as with Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Winterthur and Zurich, which are taking similar initiatives to take in people who have fled? If not, why not?”

27.01.21: Rejection of the interpellation by the city council

The city council rejects all three points of the interpellation with the following reasons (full answers in the PDF below):

The responsibility lies with the federal government and not with the canton or the city of Zofingen. The town is already heavily involved in this issue and is currently taking care of 20 more people than it should according to the cantonal key (65 instead of 45.17 people). For this reason, no further admission is necessary at the moment. Accordingly, the city does not want to turn to the federal government to demand communal reception facilities, nor does it want to network with other cities that are willing to take in refugees.

Reply-of-the-Zofingen-City-Council-to-the-Interpellation

Agenda for the Residents’ Council meeting on 22 March 2021.

This initiative is part of the campaign “500 people for Aargau”.

The refugee camps in Greece are in dire straits. Several tens of thousands of refugees are locked up in camps under the most degrading conditions. Their situation is so unbearable that at Easter 2020, the three national churches of Switzerland jointly appealed to the Federal Council to alleviate the tragedy and accept 5000 refugees from Greece into Switzerland.

The campaign “500 people for the municipalities in Aargau” takes up this appeal and wants to achieve that municipalities and cities voluntarily increase their quota for taking in people. In this way, they can create the necessary capacity in and with the canton for the government to register the “free space” with the federal government for the admission of people from precarious camps. Numerous communes have already given positive feedback.

Ask your municipality in Aargau to take in people too. The requests are coordinated by the association Netzwerk Asyl Aargau.

Letter template “500 people for the municipalities in Aargau”.

Document