A Bavarian district council leader has sent a bus full of asylum seekers who have been granted asylum to the office of the German Chancellor.

In autumn, Bavarian Landshut district leader Peter Dreier spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone and said that the district is about to reach the limit of how many refugees it can accept and that he would send everyone over that number to the Chancellor’s office (Kanzleramt) in Berlin. Today he made good on that pledge. He accompanied the bus by car.

The politician has informed the office in advance and is ready to take the people back to Landshut if they cannot be placed in Berlin. All the people on the bus have agreed to take part in the 550km journey and want to stay in Berlin if possible.

For Dreier, politicians far away in Berlin seem to be losing sight of the extent of the crisis.

“They say that not as many would be coming, now the problem is solved. But they don’t understand that there is a build-up because the refugees who arrived in the last few months are still there,” he told Die Welt newspaper.