Germany will start from this Monday for temporarily control all its land borders to reduce irregular migration, despite rejection from neighbouring countries and accusations that the measure would target a blow to the European Schengen area of free movement.
The “flexible and security-based” checks will be carried out over the next six months at the central European country’s borders with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark, in addition to those already existing in the areas. borders with Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic and Poland.
The German Chancellor, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholzdefended the controls on Saturday at an event in the far-right state of Brandenburg Alternative for Germany (AfD) is leading the polls ahead of regional elections next Sunday.
“Irregular migration is not what we want,” he said, stressing that “it was not good“that of the 300,000 people who arrived in Germany last year, only a proportion were entitled to protection.
Germany is wary of some neighbours
“Unfortunately, we cannot fully trust all of our neighbors to do things the way they should,” he said.
Scholz’s coalition is under pressure over the rise of the the far right in the east of the country and a Christian Democratic opposition that insists on the general rejection of asylum seekers at the German borders, which the government considers contrary to European law.
With these controls, Germany wants to “further reduce irregular immigration, stop people smugglers, arrest criminals and identify and arrest Islamists at an early stage,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Sunday.
“We continue to act in close coordination with our neighbouring countries. We also want to ensure that controls have the least possible impact on people living in border regions, travellers, trade and the economy,” he assured.
Germany says internal border controls with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland, in place since October 2023, have proven effective, turning back more than 30,000 people who tried to enter the country illegally since then.
Faeser assures that in addition There are a fifth fewer asylum applications and a fifth comes back again.
Berlin, however, maintains that the overall burden on Germany must be taken into account, in particular the limited capacities of municipalities in housing, as well as in the areas of education and integration due to the admission of 1.2 million refugees from Ukraine and migration to asylum in recent years.
Reviews from neighbors and other countries
Germany is thus trying to justify its actions after criticism from some neighbours, but also from EU countries such as Greece.
Scholz called the Polish Prime Minister on Friday: Donald Tusk to ensure that the measure complies with European legal order.
The Polish liberal politician called Berlin’s announcement “unacceptable” and announced urgent consultations with other affected European Union (EU) countries.
The Austrian government has announced that it will not accept people turned back at the German border. “There is no room for maneuver,” said Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.
Other European countries have also commented on the measure. The Greek Prime Minister, a conservative Kyriakos Mitsotakisstressed that the migration issue cannot be resolved by “unilaterally abolishing” the Schengen Agreement, referring to the recent decision of the German government to re-establish controls at land borders with neighbouring countries.
In Hungarythe prime minister, Viktor Orbanknown for his ultranationalist and anti-immigration views, applauded the German decision, but Interior Minister Gergely Gulyás said Germany had destroyed the Schengen zone, first in 2015 when it allowed the mass entry of refugees, and now with the new border controls.
The European Commission only recalled that the Schengen Borders Code allows Member States to introduce border controls in situations of threat, provided that this is considered “necessary and proportionate”.
