Just a show or an effective remedy?
What border controls bring
September 26, 2023, 6:24 p.m
The Union is calling for an expansion of border controls, and Interior Minister Faeser is no longer ruling them out. But experts, such as those from the police union, are skeptical. What do they bring? What exactly is planned? Questions and answers.
In recent months, more asylum seekers have been coming to Germany, especially via the Czech Republic and Poland, but also on other routes. Between the beginning of January and the end of August, more than 204,000 people applied for asylum for the first time. According to estimates, there could be 300,000 or even 350,000 asylum seekers by the end of the year. They add to the approximately two million Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Ukrainians and many others who have come to Germany in recent years.
In the trend barometer from RTL and ntv, respondents are attaching more and more importance to the topic of immigration. Mayors and district administrators are sounding the alarm because they can hardly accommodate the arriving migrants. The federal and state governments have long been fighting over who pays the bills. But it’s about more than money. Has a load limit been reached? It’s not just Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder who says this.
For weeks, domestic politicians at the federal and state levels have been calling for stationary controls at the borders with the Czech Republic and Poland. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser rejected this for a long time – now the SPD politician has given in to the pressure to some extent. The most important questions and answers:
Are stationary controls at the borders now coming?
Not at first, but Faeser wants to have them prepared. Such controls must be requested from the EU Commission. It has existed on the border with Austria since 2015. The Federal Minister of the Interior does not want to submit such an application for other border sections, at least for the time being. Instead, it is planning increased controls near the border.
She represents the legal opinion that the federal police can stop vehicles directly at the border – for example if there is a suspicion of smuggling there. Faeser also wants more joint patrols with Poland and the Czech Republic. Faeser recently emphasized: “Only European solutions will offer effective and lasting relief for municipalities, namely border control at the external border, not across internal borders.”
What are the advantages of inpatient checks?
Proponents hope that this will make it easier to catch smugglers and reject certain asylum seekers straight away. Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster also gave humanitarian reasons to ntv.de. He expects “something to happen soon,” said the CDU politician. By this he meant serious accidents with deaths and injuries or “terrible images” when a vehicle is opened during an inspection. In this respect, it is important to stop the smugglers as early as possible.
Rejections are possible if the person is already registered in another EU country or an asylum procedure is already underway there. Anyone who has already applied for asylum in Germany and been rejected can also be turned back at the border. Transit to another country is also not possible and is a reason for rejection. However, these cases only affect some of the migrants.
The basic rule is: Anyone who is caught at the border can immediately apply for asylum and then have to be handed over to the immigration authorities. This is what EU law requires. Compared to the overall volume, rejections are relatively rare. Migration experts assume that those rejected will try to enter Germany again.
Raphael Bossong from the Science and Politics Foundation told ntv.de that border controls could help reduce the number of asylum seekers. But the effect is manageable. The high migration pressure will not disappear as a result. Katharina Barley, SPD’s top candidate for next year’s European elections, also said in the “ntv Frühstart” that border controls are the right thing to do as a last resort.
How often do rejections occur?
According to the federal government, 4,489 people were turned back at the border checkpoints on the German-Austrian land border in the first half of 2023. During the same period, 4,787 foreigners were turned back at the German-Swiss land border, where the federal police are allowed to check trains on Swiss territory in accordance with an agreement with Bern, primarily because they could not produce valid travel documents.
The CDU points out that 14,600 people were turned back at the German-Austrian border last year. The total number would of course increase if controls were also carried out at other borders, especially those with Poland and the Czech Republic, where the volume has increased massively.
What speaks against stationary border controls?
They tie up a lot of personnel and are easy for smugglers to recognize and deal with. Experience has shown that if controls are increased at one point, unauthorized entries increase after a while at another section of the border because the smugglers have adjusted to this. In addition, there are no longer any turnpikes, offices or parking spaces. The police would have to act differently.
Furthermore, once such controls have been introduced, it is often difficult to find an exit. This can easily seem like a signal that a state wants to relax its regulations with regard to irregular migration. This is shown by the example of the controls in Bavaria. They were first applied for in autumn 2015 – at that time the Federal Minister of the Interior was still called Thomas de Maizière and came from the CDU. Since then they have been extended again and again – including by Nancy Faeser. This particularly annoys the Greens, who generally consider such controls to be wrong.
Where else in the EU are there currently inpatient checks?
Although the principle of open internal borders actually applies in the Schengen area, several states have currently drawn this card. Spain, for example, announced controls for a few days from September 28th and justified this with security precautions around the informal meeting of heads of state and government in Granada. Norway is currently checking ports with ferry connections to Schengen states and justifies this with risks to critical infrastructure on land and in the sea area as well as the danger from Russian secret service activities.
Denmark cites several reasons for its controls on the land border with Germany, including organized crime, irregular migration and the threat of Islamist terror. Austria has notified border controls for some sections, Sweden for all internal borders. France has also requested controls at its borders with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, citing terror risks and irregular migration via the central Mediterranean route and the so-called Balkan route. However, the French do not check everywhere around the clock, but rather selectively and according to the situation.
What do the unions say?
The German Police Union is campaigning for stationary checks. The police union (GdP), on the other hand, considers the French model to be better. “We recently had twelve hundred riot police at the internal borders and in the border area,” says Andreas Roßkopf, chairman of the GdP Federal Police District. Today, Tuesday, two more hundreds were added. This means that the load limit has been reached. He is convinced that comprehensive stationary controls on the eastern border could only be carried out for a few weeks in terms of personnel. In an interview with ntv.de at the end of August, Roßkopf even spoke of a “stage event that is intended to suggest security to citizens”.