Berlin is struggling to recruit enough German-speaking police officers amid a surge of migrant applicants.
The president of the city’s police force Barbara Slowik Meisel revealed that 40 per cent of applicants failed a German language skills test.
She said that this had created a dilemma for her and the force, as the city is in dire need of new cops but cannot afford to lower its standards.
Ms. Slowik Meisel told local media: ‘We have applicants, but we also have high standards that we cannot lower.
‘[As police officers] we have to explain our police actions day in and day out… and also possibly document things in writing.’
She said that around a quarter of 1,200 entry level positions have been left unfilled since 2025, adding: ‘We are facing extremely fierce competition for suitable applicants, and the emphasis is on suitable.’
Figures showed that of the 240 cadets who began training in spring 2025, more than half required additional tutoring in German.
Berlin has the highest proportion of officers from a migrant background of any force in Germany at 37%.
Berlin is struggling to recruit enough German-speaking police officers amid a surge of migrant applicants
Applicants must pass a writing test on a computer, as well as a dictation test and a test of their German grammar skills.
They must also prove they have a solid understanding of Germany’s core legal principles and be able to explain them to the public.
The debate over migration and the role it plays in the country has become more and more heated, particularly in the leadup to key elections in the east next month.
Earlier this year, illegal immigration in Germany dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade, barring the first year of the pandemic.
The record figures occurred under the watch of the country’s conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who pledged to tighten border controls when he came to power last May.
From January to November 2025, 106,298 first-time asylum applications were recorded by the national migration agency Bamf, putting Germany on course for its smallest annual total since 2013.
In 2024, number was over double, at 229,751.
Last year, the federal police, responsible for controlling the border, registered 62,526 illegal entries, half as many as in 2023.
Meanwhile, nearly 75 per cent of the 33,000 people who attempted to cross the frontier between May and December were either rejected or, in 58 cases, physically escorted back to the other side.
While Merz’s government claims responsibility for the decrease – which began to take hold two years ago – it is difficult to determine the exact cause of the decline.
The amount of migrants entering the European Union via Belarus, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean has also fell sharply for various reasons – including geopolitical shifts in the Middle East and Poland’s extensive policing measures on its eastern border.
At the same time as the drop in immigration, a mild but protracted recession has rendered the German economy less attractive that its neighbours.
