Germany’s interior minister has announced that controls at all of the country’s land borders are to be stepped up in an attempt to confront what it called “irregular migration” after a recent spate of suspected Islamist attacks.
The new regulations are due to start next Monday and to be in place for an initial six months, before being reviewed, Nancy Faeser said in a statement.
The move comes after Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), campaigning heavily against migration, this month became the first far-right political party since the Nazi era to win a state election in Germany. It comes ahead of a second round of emergency talks on migration policy due to be held on Tuesday in Berlin between the coalition government, opposition parties and federal states.
The measures are among a number of new rules Germany has introduced in recent years, following a large number of migrant arrivals, notably people escaping war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Faeser’s announcement, which has the backing of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is seen as an attempt to regain control of a heated debate that has dominated recent state election campaigns with opposition and far-right and far-left candidates seizing on voters’ concerns over integration, security and overstrained public services including housing and education.
“We are strengthening domestic security and continuing our tough stance against irregular migration,” Faeser said.
Recent fatal attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers whose claims had been turned down and who were due to have been deported have fuelled agitation over immigration as well as the terms and conditions under which newcomers are given refuge and the right to stay in the country.
Most focus has been given to a knife attack that killed three at a festival in the western city of Solingen last month, for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility. The main suspect was a man from Syria who was supposed to have been deported to Bulgaria where he had applied for asylum.
Last week, an 18-year-old Austrian armed with a rifle and mounted bayonet was shot dead in Munich on a square near the Israeli consulate and a Nazi documentation centre. The man, of Bosnian origin, who it is believed had been radicalised, had crossed the Austrian border into Germany.
Three months ago, an alleged Islamist from Afghanistan whose asylum claim had been turned down, but who had not been deported, stabbed and killed a policeman in the city of Mannheim.
Over the past year, various other Islamist attacks in Germany and France have been foiled by authorities and dozens of arrests have been made across Europe.
The AfD earlier this month won a state election in Thuringia advocating the need for radical change in Germany’s migration policy.
Migration remains the main issue on voters’ agenda ahead of an election in the northern state of Brandenburg in less than two weeks’ time. The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), to which Scholz and Faeser belong, are battling to maintain control of the state, with the outcome seen as a likely determinant in the future of Scholz’s government, especially ahead of a federal election in a year’s time.
Tension has been building on the issue over almost a decade. In 2015, the government of Angela Merkel allowed about a million people, most of whom had fled Syria and Iraq, to arrive under what is sometimes referred to as an “open door” policy. More recently, it automatically granted asylum to an estimated 1 million Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s 2022 invasion of their country, at the same time as Germany was tackling an energy and cost of living crisis.
Amid concerns over domestic security, tighter controls were introduced last year on Germany’s land borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. Those together with existing controls on its border with Austria have led to the return of about 30,000 migrants since October 2023, the government said on Monday. According to its own statistics, applications for asylum fell by 22% between January and August, which it said was as a result of its tighter measures.
It has also focused on clamping down on the implementation of existing deportation regulations and restarted the return of convicted criminals of Afghan nationality to their home country despite human rights concerns following the Taliban’s seizing of power in 2021. A recent operation to return a plane load of Afghans was given widespread publicity in what was seen as a signal to the German electorate that the government was acting.
The border controls are likely to be challenged within the EU especially if they result in German authorities insisting that other countries in the bloc take back large numbers of asylum seekers and migrants under the so-called Dublin Agreement rules.
Austria’s interior minister, Gerhard Karner, has said it was not prepared to receive any migrants who were turned back at its border with Germany. “There’s no room for manoeuvre over this,” he said.
According to EU legislation, countries in the Schengen region, which includes every member state except for Cyprus and Ireland, may introduce border controls only as a last resort, in order to prevent threats to internal security.
Germany has habitually introduced the controls around sporting events, such as the recent Uefa European football championship, publishing at the end of the tournament the numbers of convicted criminals, suspects, illegal entrants and contraband goods its border guards intercepted while the temporary measures were in place.
Questions are being asked as to how Germany will be able to sustain the proper, long-term control of the more than 3,700km (2,300 miles) of the frontier it shares with Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland. Police chiefs have voiced their concerns over a lack of personnel and resources.
