Germany notifies the EU of border controls at the Polish, Czech and Swiss frontiers
Germany notified Monday the European Union's executive branch of temporary border controls at its frontiers with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, going a step beyond a move last month to strengthen checks on its eastern border.
The notification would enable Germany to carry out the same systematic checks at the border that it has conducted on its frontier with Austria since 2015.
The government has responded over the past week to intense pressure to address the arrival of large numbers of migrants following a pair of state elections that brought poor results for the governing parties and gains for the far-right Alternative for Germany.
It has announced draft legislation to ease deportations of unsuccessful asylum-seekers as Chancellor OIaf Scholz met Friday with the opposition leader and two leading state governors for what he called a “friendly and constructive exchange” on migration issues.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser last month ordered border checks on Germany’s eastern frontiers with Poland and the Czech Republic strengthened, but the conservative opposition urged her to formally notify border checks — a move she has now taken.
Faeser said in a statement that “the smugglers’ business is becoming ever more brutal and unscrupulous,” pointing to a crash on a Bavarian highway Friday in which seven people were killed after a van overloaded with migrants overturned when the driver and suspected smuggler accelerated to avoid a police check.
“It is now necessary to take all possible measures to stop this cruel business in people’s lives,” she said. “At the time, we need an effective limitation of irregular migration to relieve our municipalities.”
She said that police “can now flexibly use the whole package of stationary and mobile border policing measures, according to the current situation.”
Shelters for migrants and refugees across Germany have been filling up in recent months as significant numbers of asylum-seekers add to more than 1 million Ukrainians who have arrived since the start of the war in their homeland.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
More
Flat-hunting in Switzerland’s cheapest and most expensive municipalities
More
Is Switzerland repeating England’s housing mistakes?
More
The Russia affair in the Swiss secret service: ‘This is espionage’
More
What a love of cat ladders says about the Swiss
More
Swiss food labels must declare animal suffering from July
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.