German Minister Faeser orders more border controls
Published: Monday, Sep 9th 2024, 15:30
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In order to more strongly curb the number of people entering Germany without a visa, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has ordered temporary controls at all German land borders and notified the EU Commission. This was announced in government circles on Monday.
The reasons for this are not only to limit irregular migration, but also to protect internal security from the current threats posed by Islamist terrorism and cross-border crime.
The debate about irregular migration and deportations has recently intensified due to several acts of violence. In Solingen, three people were killed and eight others injured in a suspected Islamist knife attack at a town festival in August. A 26-year-old Syrian man is in custody for the crime. In Mannheim at the end of May, an Afghan injured five members of the Islam-critical Pax Europa movement and a police officer with a knife; the police officer died.
Following the incident in Solingen and the election results in the eastern German states of Thuringia and Saxony at the beginning of September, the long-standing governing parties CDU and CSU in particular stepped up the pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government and demanded massive changes to migration policy. Following an initial meeting last week, the migration consultations between the Scholz government of SPD, Greens and FDP with CDU and CSU as well as representatives of the federal states are expected to continue on Tuesday. However, it was still unclear on Monday whether the CDU and CSU - also known as the CDU/CSU - will accept the planned changes and whether they will take part in the meeting.
The Union is demanding that people "who have already been accepted in another EU member state or the Schengen area or who can also apply for asylum in a state from which they wish to enter" be sent back. The government has now developed a "model for effective refoulement in line with European law", according to government circles. This model goes beyond the current expulsions. Further details on the proposal were not initially disclosed. Refoulement at German land borders currently only takes place in certain cases: if someone is banned from entering the country or does not apply for asylum.
According to the German Ministry of the Interior, more than 30,000 people have been turned back since October. In mid-October 2023, Faeser ordered stationary controls at the borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland - although she had previously rejected calls for such controls as unnecessary for months. Such controls, which are justified on the grounds of irregular migration, have been in place at the German-Austrian land border since September 2015.
©Keystone/SDA
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