In the town hall of Bad Waldsee, camp beds are to be set up for 43 asylum seekers at the beginning of next week.

In other cities, too, festival halls are now being cleared again and emergency beds set up.

Around 250 refugees have been coming to Baden-Württemberg every day since September.

Immigration from Ukraine has stagnated, but refugee numbers from Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan remain high.

Baden-Württemberg took in about 60,000 more refugees this year than in the crisis year 2015, the situation in the communities and districts is tense - not only in Bad Waldsee in Upper Swabia.

In this situation of all things, the green-black state government could now lose one of five locations for the initial reception of refugees at the end of the year.

Rudiger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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Because the contract with the state initial reception center (LEA) in Ellwangen expires on December 31st.

And in the local council there is currently no majority for the continuation of the location.

The CDU and the Free Citizens have a two-thirds majority, both factions spoke out again this week against the continued existence of the LEA in the former Reinhardt barracks.

Around 1,200 refugees can be accommodated in the facility. The other three state reception centers in Freiburg, Sigmaringen and Karlsruhe and the arrival center in Heidelberg already lack a total of 4,200 places for orderly reception of refugees.

If the 1,200 places in Ellwangen were eliminated by the new year, there would even be a lack of 5,400 initial reception places.

The need is also greater because federal legislators have increased the maximum residence time for refugees in initial reception facilities.

The state government in Stuttgart says that negotiations with the city of Ellwangen are currently "got stuck".

The responsible Minister of Justice and Migration, Marion Gentges, is negotiating with the Mayor of Ellwangen, Michael Dambacher (both CDU).

Why things are progressing so slowly is a mystery to the employees and volunteer refugee helpers at the LEA.

“We are a hundred committed volunteers.

It was clear in March that the LEA was still needed when we had to reckon with many additional refugees from Ukraine,” says a volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous.

In October Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) traveled to Ellwangen to talk to those involved about the continuation of the LEA.

The government has been looking for replacement sites for months, but few buildings are as spacious as former barracks - they provide space for registration lanes and make it possible to comply with pandemic-related regulations.

A new facility is to be built in an old hospital

The state would like to set up a new LEA in the old district hospital in Böblingen, but it should not be ready for occupancy before 2026.

The citizens of Ellwangen probably don't want to wait that long.

The barracks are conversion sites, the city wants to build new apartments there.

The contract with the LEA had already been extended against the resistance of local politicians and some citizens.

The fact that Ellwangen member of parliament Winfried Mack (CDU) is critical of the continuation of the LEA also plays a role in the conflict.

He is also one of the harshest critics of the CDU state chairman Thomas Strobl.

And the refugee accommodation in the conservative Ostalb, where the CDU is still the dominant political party, has not only produced good news since it was set up: In May 2018, a group of refugees who were required to leave the country under the Dublin Ordinance violently opposed their Deportation resisted, so that the police had to cancel and repeat an operation.

The case drew national attention.

The bottlenecks in taking in refugees could also play a role next Wednesday at a refugee summit that the prime minister convened under pressure from the municipal umbrella organizations.