More and more refugees are lodging appeals against the rejection of their asylum applications, and the number of such appeals in administrative courts has risen sharply again in 2025.
A study by the “Deutsche Richterzeitung”, reported by the Funke Media Group (Wednesday editions), shows that the total number of cases filed with administrative courts has doubled between 2023 and 2025. In 2023 there were 71,885 plaintiffs who challenged a denied protection claim; in 2024 that number grew to 100,494.
By 2025, the justice system was receiving 143,221 lawsuits against asylum decisions. “Record‑high filing numbers and ever‑growing case loads should be a last wake‑up call for policymakers to act now” said Sven Rebehn, national managing director of the German Judges Association, according to Funke Media.
Nationwide, the system is short of roughly 2,000 prosecutors and several hundred administrative judges. Rebehn warned that if elected officials fail to resolve these glaring problems quickly, the already fragile trust in politics will suffer further damage.
The judges’ association notes that the surge in asylum appeals is particularly pronounced in Baden-Württemberg, where cases rose by 162 % from 2023 to 22,937 headline cases. In Saxony-Anhalt the increase over the past two years was 155 %; in Bavaria, 142 %; in Brandenburg, 131 %. North Rhine-Westphalia reported 22,084 cases in 2025, a 56 % rise since 2023.
“This, aside from chronically understaffed prosecutor offices, makes the administrative courts the second largest pressure point in German justice” Rebehn observed. The goal announced by the ministers’ conference in 2023-to speed up asylum appeals and conclude them within six months-remains a long way off. “In fact, courts on average still take almost twice as long nationwide, and in Berlin and Hesse even more than 16 months” he added.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) now issues asylum decisions faster than in 2023, but denial rates have also risen in recent years. According to the judges’ association, both factors contribute to the sharp increase in court filings.
BAMF reports that the number of pending asylum cases has recently been “cut in half” with 87,000 cases compared to the previous year. Applications from asylum seekers have been falling for months. The average duration of an asylum procedure stands at almost eleven months, with most cases lasting only about three months.
