Germany wants to install police controls on its border with Poland and the Czech Republic to stop the wave of illegal migration coming from the east, as confirmed by the German Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser, in an interview with the Funke media group.
“We are working on these new measures to fit them into the border surveillance system against traffickers, which is already intense,” declared the Social Democratic minister, until now reluctant, like Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to install this type of controls, which already They have existed on the border with Austria since November 2022, with prior notice to Brussels.
The police checks in that area of ??the Bavarian land are random, and right now it is not clear what those on the Polish and Czech borders would be like, whether random or fixed. The latter are considered too disruptive for the usual intense traffic of vehicles and goods between the countries of the Schengen area, and the Government of social democrats, greens and liberals fears that, if they install them, there will be a slowdown in the supply chain and harm the German economy. The German Executive therefore seeks to square the circle.
Minister Nancy Faeser said that she has already discussed the option of controls with her Czech counterpart, and that she will address the matter with the Polish minister within the framework of the meeting of EU Interior Ministers taking place this Thursday in Brussels. “We are preparing additional controls at our borders with Poland and the Czech Republic to stop traffickers,” said Faeser, “to adopt well-coordinated measures,” which could be agreed upon by the end of the week. “My goal is maximum investigative pressure on traffickers and the protection of people who cross borders in conditions that endanger their lives, often without water and hardly any oxygen,” the minister argued.
For now, the Czech Interior Minister, Vit Rakusan, has responded positively to the proposal and revealed that an approach similar to the one that works with Switzerland is being considered. “German police officers would have the right to monitor migration on the Czech side of the border alongside Czech police officers,” said Rakusan, who advanced that there will be “shocking actions” against human traffickers.
According to the German federal police, in the first half of 2023, agents intercepted 45,338 foreigners who had entered illegally through land, sea and airport borders (56% more than in the same period last year), of which 12,331 entered through the German-Polish border. Most are from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Georgia and Russia, and arrived through the Belarusian route.
