Jans offers reassurance after Ceuta, but the cantons report pressure

After thousands of migrants arrived in Ceuta in recent days, federal councillor Beat Jans said that «the situation is under control». According to the minister responsible for asylum, Switzerland is not seeing a rise in applications and is steadily working through its backlog.

Jans added that the Schengen system worked: none of those who reached Ceuta was able to continue into the rest of Europe. The country, he said, has found no indication of an increase in asylum applications.

The departure figures give a sense of the administrative workload. In the first half of 2026, 3024 people left Switzerland voluntarily, 1172 were forcibly returned and 906 transferred to other countries under the Dublin system.

The Confederation also points to progress on processing times. Extended procedures have gone from 571 days in 2025 to 457. The overall average has fallen from 218 to 164 days.

The bill that reaches cantons and municipalities

On the ground the picture differs. Zurich reports around ten thousand asylum cases pending at federal level and difficulty finding accommodation. The canton of Aargau has maintained a state of «asylum emergency» since January 2023: it then ran one emergency centre, today it runs eight.

Municipalities warn of a risk of «asylum collapse» and point to three shortages: facilities, specialist staff and public acceptance. The Confederation itself acknowledges that ordinary structures can become «partly overloaded» under exceptional pressure.

The underlying fact is one of scale. More than 235,000 refugees now live in Switzerland, roughly three times as many as fifteen years ago, and between 20,000 and 30,000 asylum applications are filed each year. A steady inflow onto a resident refugee population that has multiplied in the meantime.

Then there is the question of running costs. Eighty per cent of refugees remain dependent on social assistance, a burden that weighs on cantonal and municipal budgets far more than on the federal one. Shorter procedures act on the first stage of the process; integration into the labour market, which determines how long that burden lasts, remains the unresolved point.