Asylum procedures are increasingly occupying the judiciary. As of August 15, 196,315 asylum claims were pending in German administrative courts nationwide. In mid-January there were still 191,566 procedures. This means that the number of unresolved lawsuits rose by 4,749 within seven months. This emerges from a response from the federal government to a question from the left-wing Bundestag member Clara Bünger, which the German Press Agency reports on.
At the same time, the duration of legal proceedings regarding asylum decisions is increasing again nationwide. On average, the proceedings for lawsuits against decisions by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) lasted 15.3 months in the first half of this year. In an answer to an earlier parliamentary question, the federal government reported an average duration of 14.3 months for the previous year, although the data for the month of December was not available.
One thing is certain: after an average duration of proceedings of 26.5 months in 2021, the legal proceedings had become shorter year after year. In 2024, court proceedings involving lawsuits against initial asylum applications or subsequent applications lasted an average of 16.7 months.
And: In some federal states, these legal proceedings take twice as long as in other countries. According to the Federal Government, Saxony brought up the rear in the first half of this year with an average duration of proceedings of 20.4 months. In Lower Saxony too (20 months), anyone who sued against an asylum decision had to wait a particularly long time for a court decision. In Rhineland-Palatinate it was on average after 9.2 months, in Bavaria after 10.7 months.
However: While the duration in Bavaria either fell or at least did not increase over the past three years, a reverse trend was observed in Rhineland-Palatinate. In 2023, the asylum application procedures there were completed after an average of just five months.
One reason for the procedure to take longer is the increase in the number of asylum applications. The duration of the proceedings is also influenced by whether the respective administrative court receives a particularly large number of complaints from people from certain countries of origin for whom the decision for or against protection in Germany is difficult.
In 2025, according to the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), a total of 149,995 Bamf decisions were legally challenged between January and November. The complaint rate (i.e. the proportion of asylum decisions complained about as a whole) was therefore 52.0 percent.
It is therefore higher than in the previous two years: in 2024, 103,089 Bamf decisions were complained about, which corresponded to a complaint rate of 34.2 percent. In 2023 the lawsuit rate was 30.7 percent with 80,245 proceedings, in 2022 it was 32.2 percent with 67,267. According to the bpb, the complaint rate was back at the level of previous years after a significant decline from 2021 onwards.
Particularly in the group of rejected asylum seekers and migrants who have already received subsidiary protection, the complaint rate continued to rise in 2025: with 90,522 rejections complained about, it was around 89.9 percent. As early as 2024, the proportion of complaints against rejected asylum applications, at around 88.4 percent, significantly exceeded the rate of the previous eleven years.
According to the bpb, the complaint rate against negative asylum decisions was higher than the overall complaint rate in all years, but had recently fallen: in 2023 it was 58.8 percent, in 2022 it was 64.1 percent, in 2021 it was 57.2 percent and in 2020 it was 73.3 percent.
