The German Interior Ministry is expected to register fixed border controls with its neighbouring countries of Poland, Czechia and Switzerland, in an effort to reduce the number of refugees entering the country.
Government sources reveal that the necessary notification to the EU Commission will be prepared by next Monday, while the plan for deploying police checks has already been effective at the border with Austria for the last eight years.
Nancy Faeser, the German Interior Minister has rejected the permanent fixed points for some time now, with one of the reasons being the effects it would have on free movement in the area.
However, the interior ministers of the eastern German states of Saxony and Brandenburg have pressed Faeser into implementing such measures.
The Federal Police can now flexibly deploy the entire package of stationary and mobile border police measures, depending on the current situation. With the notification of controls at the Czech, Polish and Swiss land borders, the legal basis for this now exists. We are in close contact with our neighboring states and federal states so that all measures on both sides of our borders work together as best as possible. In coordination with Switzerland, we have decided to further expand our measures based on the joint action plan.
She also said that it is important for the country to keep free movement unaffected by the controls, especially the everyday life of commuters, on trade and travel.
Although Germany had introduced additional controls at border crossings with Poland and Czechia last month those were temporary measures.
The German municipalities have urged the federal government to provide more funding in order for them to address the surge in migrant arrivals and have also pointed out that the situation of accommodation and services is almost looking like those of 2015 when Europe was dealing with a migrant crisis while Germany received more than one million refugees coming from the Middle East.
Migration in the country has raised concerns at opposition parties in Germany, who have called on the government to limit the number of asylum-seekers, as Bavaria’s conservative premier Markus Soeder suggests a maximum cap of 200,000 asylum seekers.
Smuggling people on the German borders with all of its neighbouring countries has further deteriorated in recent months as in October alone, the Federal Police identified around 98,000 irregular border crossings in Germany, while in 2022 there were around 92,000.
