Hopes were high. 700 nursing staff were to come to Germany from Brazil – every year. That was the goal of Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD), who flew to Brazil last summer to promote the placement partnership between the local nursing chamber Conselho Federal de Enfermagem (Cofen) and the Federal Employment Agency (BA).
Now it turns out that the actual numbers are much lower. Between the beginning of 2022 and mid-2024, 266 Brazilian nurses traveled to Germany. This is evident from a response from the federal government to a request from the AfD parliamentary group. The BA confirmed the figures when asked by WELT. It is unclear how many of these 266 nurses are still working in Germany as of today.
The already low number of placements is now likely to approach zero – at least for the time being. Because the agreement between the BA and the Brazilian Nursing Chamber agreed in June 2022 has been suspended since the end of 2023, as WELT recently reported.
The background: The Brazilian Minister of Labor Luiz Marinho – with whom Heil demonstrated unity during his visit in June 2023 – accused the German side of not adhering to the procedures on which they had agreed. There have reportedly been increasing complaints about the way the poached staff are treated. However, according to the Federal Ministry of Labor, the companies against which the allegations were made must be private intermediaries that have not cooperated with the Federal Agency.
“The suspension of the placement agreement means that the BA cannot recruit any nursing staff until further notice,” the Federal Agency said in response to a query. In general, however, only a small proportion of people are entered after being placed by the BA, as the agency itself points out. According to the agency, 80 to 90 percent of nursing staff come to Germany via private companies.
“It’s like most traffic light projects: you make a big announcement, start a PR wave and produce nice pictures, but the bottom line is that it all turns out to be hot air,” criticizes Leif-Erik Holm, AfD member of the Bundestag from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, who submitted the request to the federal government. “Of course it makes sense to specifically recruit real skilled workers. But that requires reliable agreements and a design that is as unbureaucratic as possible.”
According to the German Nursing Council (DPR), there is already a shortage of 115,000 skilled workers – by 2034 there could be up to 500,000, the warning goes. The state, however, is continuing to try to recruit nursing staff from Brazil. The federal government states: “The federal government itself is not recruiting nursing staff in Brazil.” However, this contradicts the communication of the BMAS: “Heil is recruiting skilled workers in Brazil” was the title of the corresponding communication from July 2023.
If possible, the nursing staff should be professionally prepared for the German job market in their home country. For example, the Federal Ministry of Health supports the “Global Skills Partnerships – GSP” between the University Medical Center Göttingen, the Catholic University of Brasilia and a private recruitment agency.
The university will therefore include nursing training modules in Lower Saxony in its curriculum. The German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) has been provided with 80,000 euros in funding in 2023 as start-up aid, according to the federal government.
