Germany orders nationwide border checks in migrant crackdown

Schengen free travel suspended as government responds to extremist attack and far-right election win

German police escort migrants near the border with Poland. AFP

Germany has ordered entry checks on its entire land border as it increases measures against illegal migration and extremism.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser issued the order on Monday as the government responds to a far-right election win and a terrorist attack in recent weeks.

The temporary checks mean asylum seekers can be turned away at any of Germany's nine land borders. Ms Faeser has notified the EU she is suspending free travel under the Schengen zone to curb illegal migration and contain the "acute danger" from extremism.

Checks were already in place at Germany's borders with Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Poland, and for France during the Olympics and Paralympics. Monday's decision expands the scheme to Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg and will take effect next Monday, lasting six months.

Immigration officials say the checks will be carried out "flexibly", with a mixture of stationary border posts and roving patrols aimed at cutting off people-smuggling routes. There is no change to visa policy but people will need to show passports at what were previously open borders.

"We are strengthening our internal security by taking concrete action and we are continuing our tough policy on illegal migration," Ms Faeser said at a press conference. She said stricter checks in Germany were needed until a reformed EU asylum system begins.

Asylum debate

Germany has struggled to enforce asylum rules that call for people to be returned to the first EU country in which they arrived. A Syrian who should have been in Bulgaria under the EU rules was identified as the culprit in a stabbing in Solingen on August 23, in which three people died.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party's victory in an eastern state on September 1, the far right's most significant election win since the end of Nazi rule, has thrown Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government into crisis mode. Voter anger over immigration and asylum is regarded as a key factor in the result.

Ministers have held emergency cross-party talks on migration and a first deportation to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan took 28 convicted criminals to Kabul. Plans have been announced to strip asylum from refugees who holiday in their homeland.

Ms Faeser's decision on Monday goes further still, ordering the strictest controls on Germany's 3,876km land border since the Covid-19 pandemic. She said 30,000 people had been turned away since partial checks were brought in last October.

The EU agreed to a hard-fought overhaul to its asylum and migration laws this year but the rules won't come into force until 2026.

German towns and cities have sounded alarms for months at overcrowded asylum housing, with the backlog at its highest level since the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe. Almost 47,000 Syrians are awaiting an asylum decision and many more have only an interim status in Germany.

New measures to tackle extremism are also in the works, including wider facial recognition powers and stricter weapons laws. MPs return from their summer break on Tuesday, initially to debate the budget and mark 75 years of the post-war German parliament.

An attempted terrorist shooting in Munich last Friday, in which a suspected extremist from Austria drove over the border and opened fire near an Israeli consulate, highlighted the threat once more. Austria is planning a similar counter-extremism crackdown after a foiled attack plot on a Taylor Swift concert.