Former Syrian refugee starts work as small-town mayor in Germany

A former refugee from Syria has started work as the mayor of a small German town after a significant election triumph.

Ryyan Alshebl’s election “symbolises the integration of millions of Syrian refugees” in Europe, the EU’s top representative to Syria said.

Mr Alshebl is believed to be Germany’s first mayor from among about 900,000 people who arrived during the 2015 refugee crisis.

He fled Syria’s civil war via Turkey and Greece that year and was initially housed in refugee accommodation in Germany.

Eight years on, he persuaded the people of Ostelsheim, a town with a population of 2,700 in south-western Germany, to elect him as mayor.

Like an increasing number of those who arrived in 2015, he has taken up German citizenship. Syrians can complete the eight-year waiting period or get a passport early by excelling in integration courses.

Syrian refugees “already are a bridge over the Mediterranean between Europe and their homeland”, the EU’s chargé d’affaires Dan Stoenescu said on Monday, as he saluted Mr Alshebl’s election.

“They will be in the forefront of bringing much needed positive change.”

Mr Alshebl, who is a Green party member but ran as an independent, won 55.4 per cent of the vote in the mayoral election in April.

He thanked voters for “making history” and promised to be a “mayor for all” upon taking office.

During the campaign he pledged to improve childcare, improve internet access and involve residents in mayoral decision-making.

Now aged 29, he said he had left Syria to avoid being conscripted into the war and was part of the cohort allowed into Germany when then-chancellor Angela Merkel declared “we can manage it”.

Her policies led to a migrant-sceptic backlash and the rise of the populist Alternative for Germany party, which in 2017 became the strongest far-right force in parliament since the Second World War.

However, many Syrians have put down roots in Germany and formed one of the country’s youngest groups of migrants in a country with a labour shortage and ageing population.

Little over 1 per cent of Germany’s mayors come from a migrant background, compared to about 29 per cent of the population, it was reported last year.

Frankfurt’s mayor Mike Josef was born in Syria in 1983 but left the country as a young child, well before the influx of migrants that followed the eruption of Syria’s civil war.

Mr Alshebl, a member of Syria’s Druze religious minority, told AFP in May that he had “mixed feelings” about Syria. He has not returned there since arriving in Germany on foot.

“It is the country where you were born and raised … you long for the people you grew up with,” he said.

“But I am happy that I got this chance to live here at all” when others have not, he said.