The German government on Monday ordered temporary controls at all land borders, and expanding checks it already has in place at some borders, saying that it was responding to irregular migration and to protect the nation from extremist threats.
“We are strengthening our internal security through concrete action and we are continuing our tough stance against irregular migration,” German Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser said at a news conference.
The ministry said that it notified the EU on Monday of the order to set up border controls at the land borders with France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands for six months. They are to begin on next week on Monday next week.
Photo: Reuters
It adds to restrictions already in place on the land borders with Poland, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
“Until we achieve strong protection of the EU’s external borders with the new Common European Asylum System, we must increase controls at our national borders even more,” Faeser said.
She said that Germany already has had more than 30,000 rejections of people seeking to cross its borders since October last year.
“This served to further limit irregular migration, and to protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime. We are doing everything we can to better protect people in our country against this,” she said.
The order comes as the coalition government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is facing pressure to take a tougher stance on irregular migration.
A deadly knife attack in Soligen last month killed three people. The perpetrator was a Syrian asylum seeker who claimed to be inspired by the Islamic State group.
Police in Munich last week exchanged fire with a gunman near the Israeli Consulate, fatally wounding him. Authorities said they believe he was planning to attack the consulate on the 52nd anniversary of the attack on the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
Germany has accepted large numbers of refugees from the Middle East over the past decade, but now a political backlash is building, with support growing for far-right party Alternative for Germany, which won its first state election earlier this month in Thuringia and had a strong showing in another state, Saxony.
Scholz in June vowed that the nation would start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria again after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant left one police officer dead and four other people wounded.
Germany deported Afghan nationals to their homeland on Aug. 30, the first time it did so since since August 2021, when the Taliban returned to power.
The government described the 28 Afghan nationals as convicted criminals, but did not clarify what their offenses were.
The number of people applying for asylum in Germany last year rose to more than 350,000, an increase of more than 50 percent year-on-year. The largest number of asylum seekers came from Syria, followed by Turkey and Afghanistan.
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