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Germany announced Monday that it would introduce controls at all of its borders to combat illegal immigration, which has once again become a major political issue for Olaf Scholz’s government in the face of the rise of the extreme right. “We are continuing to apply our hard line against irregular immigration,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said of the new measures.
Tensions with other states
Controls with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark will be established for six months from September 16. They will be added to the controls already in place at the borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland. Berlin considers these measures necessary for “the protection of internal security against the current threats of Islamist terrorism and cross-border crime”, two weeks after the attack in Solingen claimed by the Islamic State group.
Last week, an attempted attack targeted the Israeli consulate general in Munich by an 18-year-old Austrian known to have Islamist sympathies. The Interior Ministry said it had informed the European Union authorities, as these were exceptional measures that deviate from the rules on free movement in the Schengen area. However, this hardening could strain relations between Germany and its neighbors, especially since the ruling coalition also said Monday that it wanted to increase the number of migrants turned back at the German borders.
Austria has already warned that it “will not accept people sent back from Germany”, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. The conservative opposition (CDU) has been urging the government for several days to make wider use of this extremely controversial practice of sending asylum seekers back to the EU country through which they arrived, without allowing them to apply for asylum in Germany. Berlin says it has developed a legal solution “in line with European law” that Nancy Faeser is due to detail on Tuesday.
Reception capacities at the limits
Asylum and immigration policy has returned to the forefront of debate in Germany with the far-right AfD party making a strong showing in two regional elections in early September, winning record results. The AfD won the state election in Thuringia, where it became the largest political force in the regional parliament. A new left-wing party, the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which calls for tighter control of migration flows, also made spectacular gains in the elections.
AfD and BSW are expected to make a further electoral surge in a third election on September 22 in Brandenburg, the region around Berlin. The already heated debate over asylum policy has been fueled by the triple murder in Solingen, western Germany, in late August, of a 26-year-old Syrian man who should have been deported.
In the wake of this attack, the government announced the withdrawal of aid for asylum seekers who entered another EU state before going to Germany. Berlin also wants to speed up the expulsion of refugees who have been the subject of a criminal conviction. For example, Germany sent back to their country 28 Afghans convicted of crimes at the end of August, for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
A claimed hardening
A year ago, it had already strengthened its border controls in a context of a sharp rise in the number of asylum applications. The social democrat Olaf Scholz, who governs with the Greens and the liberals, boasted on Sunday of having “achieved the biggest change in the last ten or twenty years in the management of immigration”, claiming this hardening after the reception policy embodied by the former conservative chancellor Angela Merkel.
During the 2015-2016 migration crisis, Europe’s largest economy took in more than a million refugees, including many Syrians. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Germany has taken in around a million Ukrainian exiles who fled their country. Welcoming refugees is putting many communities to the test. Berlin cited “the limited capacities of municipalities in terms of accommodation, education and integration” on Monday.
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