Germany’s interior ministry is set to reinstate border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic to crack down on irregular migration, despite strong opposition from within the coalition government and trade unions, who have called the move inefficient.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said she plans to reintroduce the controversial border controls in the coming days.
“For now, we are also preparing stationary border controls. This is about adding additional controls,” Faeser had told Deutschlandfunk on Tuesday. “We have to see if that helps,” she added.
The move follows her announcement last week that the government is evaluating the possibility of checks at the border to Poland and the Czech Republic in response to rising migratory pressure. According to Politico, she will officially announce the new border checks on Wednesday.
However, the move does not sit well with her coalition partners of the liberal FDP and the Greens.
“Stationary border controls are not a convincing answer,” Britta Haßelmann, co-leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, told journalists on Tuesday.
Similarly, the FDP leader in the Bundestag, Christian Dürr, stated that such measures could only be implemented in an emergency.
Business and police trade unions also criticised the interior ministry’s plans.
The German police union has also come out against the measure, questioning its effectiveness in uncovering smuggling networks.
“We are against fixed stationary border checks because it is not effective for police work,” Erika Schöne-Krause, the union’s Vice Chair, told Rheinische Post on Tuesday. Referring to them as an unnecessary burden on staffing, which smugglers would simply bypass, she said random checks would be a lot more efficient.
“We cannot limit the numbers of migration through this,” she claimed, adding that the issue could only be adequately addressed at the EU level.
Business groups are also fiercely opposed to the move, fearing that the introduction of border controls will disrupt trade.
Any controls would have to be handled with sensitivity towards cross-border trade and business, the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) and the Federal Association of Forwarding and Logistics (DSLV) pleaded.
Closed borders could cause “enormous economic damage to Germany”, said Marcel Fratzscher, economist and president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), pointing to Brexit as a negative example.
The topic of border checks could be a major discussion point at the EU summit of interior ministers on Thursday, as several EU governments have instated new internal checks.
Austria announced checks at the Italian border in mid-September, and Poland is considering following suit at its border with Slovakia.
(Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de)
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