Germany will strengthen its border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic where migrant flows are increasing sharply and putting pressure on the government of Olaf Scholz as well as the regions overwhelmed by the reception of asylum seekers.
The burning migration issue is also coming back to strain relations between the member states of the European Union who have been divided for years over the management of refugees at the bloc’s borders and their distribution within the Old Continent.
European Interior Ministers are meeting in Brussels on Thursday for a new meeting on the laborious reform of the common migration policy.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced on Wednesday a strengthening of mobile controls at the border with Poland (470 km long) and the Czech Republic (650 km).
However, she did not announce fixed controls as demanded by the conservatives of the CDU, the main opposition party, an exceptional measure on the territory of the European Union of which Brussels must be informed.
“But I do not exclude the possibility that we will do it later”, if the additional controls “do not work”, she warned.
So far, the only fixed checkpoints to enter Germany are at the Austrian border, a legacy of the 2015-2016 migration crisis when Europe’s largest economy welcomed more than a million refugees.
“Will we get there? »
If the situation at the borders has nothing to do with that time, when Germany recorded close to 200,000 illegal entries monthly, police figures show an increase in flows, with a peak of 15,000 entries. illegal in August.
Since the start of the year, more than 70,000 entries have been counted, an increase of almost 60% compared to the same period last year.
As for asylum requests, they increased by 77% compared to 2022 (204,000 compared to 115,000), according to official statistics.
“Will we make it again? », asks the weekly Der Spiegel on the front page, in reference to “We will get there” (“Wir schaffen das”), the phrase pronounced in 2015 by ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel which had been the symbol of politics opening to migrants.
The reception of refugees has also returned to the center of debates with the strong surge of the German far-right party AfD whose voting intentions are reaching records.
“People go crazy when they see that 300,000 asylum seekers are rejected, do not leave, receive all the aid and care,” launched Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU on Wednesday, who continues to harden his position. speech on immigration.
The majority is not left out: Finance Minister Christian Lindner, of the Liberal Party, estimated that Germany had “partially lost control of access” to its territory and that this situation “should not continue” .
Elections
Germany has been the target of criticism from Italy, particularly since it suspended the reception of migrants transferred by Rome as part of a European solidarity program. Berlin is thus responding to Rome’s decision to waive its obligations to take back rejected asylum seekers in other countries.
Relations with Poland, through which migrants from the East transit, are not in good shape either: last week, Berlin and Brussels called on Warsaw to explain alleged fraud in entry visas into the EU which splashes members of the government.
Ms Faeser called on countries located on Europe’s external borders, such as Italy and Poland, to “better protect the borders” and “apply the procedures” provided by Brussels.
Without this, “open borders within the EU are in danger,” she warned.
In Germany, municipalities and regions, which have also absorbed the arrival of a million Ukrainian refugees since February 2022, say they are at the limit of their reception capacity.
A situation all the more delicate as looming in less than two weeks, on October 8, test regional elections for Olaf Scholz, in Bavaria (south) and Hesse (center). The Minister of the Interior is a candidate for the Social Democrats, the chancellor’s party, in Hesse, the Frankfurt region.