Currently, the total deficit for all German cities in 2025 is €30 billion, which jumped from last year's deficit of €24 billion.

Essen's Mayor Thomas Kufen (CDU), who is also a member of the CDU federal executive board, is sounding the alarm: "Almost every German city is now on the verge of bankruptcy."

In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, only 10 out of 396 cities and municipalities can present a balanced budget, and these alarming figures from Germany's largest federal state can be applied to the "entire country," he said.

Mayor Kufen stressed that the crisis is universal, affecting municipalities regardless of their location: "What's new is that all cities have their backs against the wall," he told Bild newspaper.

He warned that "budget freezes would now have to be imposed everywhere," including in many cities previously considered wealthy.

Kufen emphasized the need for a national discussion on affordability: "We have to talk about what we can do so that our welfare state itself does not become a social case. This means: What do we want to afford and what else can we afford?" 

However, he noted that cities cannot make these crucial decisions themselves; only the federal government can

Kufen illustrated the crisis with figures from his own city, Essen, which has a population of nearly 600,000. The city had planned a balanced budget for 2025. "But instead of a slight increase of €1.7 million, we currently have a deficit of €123 million," he calculated.

Once again, refugee accommodation and integration are near the top of the list for reasons why the city is seeing a budget shortfall. Far from being a solution to Germany's budget and pension crisis, they have become a massive financial burden for the country, costing at least €50 billion a year in social integration, housing, and benefits.

However, there are also many more hidden costs to mass immigration, including rising housing prices, healthcare costs, education costs for an increasingly foreign student population, and housing a huge number of foreigners in German prisons and psychiatric institutions. Just like Essen, even major cities like Berlin are seeing "spiraling costs" due to mass immigration, leading to large-scale debt required to keep the cities running.