Published 11 September 2024 at 09.29
Foreign. «We will set up an investigation that will be completed in 2027» or «it won't work, it goes against international conventions» is usually the answer from SD when their voters demand that the Tidö government stop immigration. But after AFD's success in the German regional elections, the German government has become so alarmed that it completely closes all national borders for asylum immigration — on Monday.
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According a press release from the Ministry of the Interior, border controls will be introduced at the German land borders with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark as of September 16, 2024.
The controls, which will last for six months in a first step, aim to stop asylum immigration and other illegal immigration.
«All German land borders will be covered by these measures, which mean that both stationary and mobile border police operations, including rejections, can be carried out in accordance with EU legislation and national law,» writes the government's Ministry of the Interior on its website.
The decision is motivated by Germany's increased problems with immigration, especially given the country's reception of 1.2 million refugees from Ukraine and a large number of asylum seekers in recent years.
According to Welt, Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser was strongly against border controls before AFD's electoral success and often suggested that those who wanted them were xenophobic, racist and so on. But now she has changed her mind.
— We are taking concrete measures to strengthen our internal security and are taking a hard line against unregulated migration. We will continue on this path until the new common European asylum system and other measures can ensure strong protection for the EU's external borders, she says today.
— We must also do more to control our national borders. These measures include effective rejections at the border – over 30,000 people have been refused entry at the borders with Poland, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic since October 2023. Therefore, we are now extending these temporary border controls to all of Germany's land borders.
At the same time, it is now being discussed exactly what should happen to the immigrants who seek asylum at the closed borders. The government wants to quickly examine their applications and reject them the neighboring country, for example Poland, according to the Dublin regulation. But Friedrich Merz, party leader of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Party CDU, wants Poland and other neighboring countries to be considered safe and that no asylum screening for applicants at these borders should be done at all.
It is clear in any case that no one wants a third world-immigrants. A diplomatic conflict can therefore be expected between the governments of Poland and Germany, writes Welt.
On Tuesday, the Anglo-Saxon left reacted strongly to Germany's announcement, and in The Guardian the decision is called «the end of Schengen», despite citizens in Schengen can still travel to and from Germany without problems, unlike the third world citizens who are now going to be turned away when trying to enter.
According to The Guardian, Germany's decision can now be expected to spread in Europe, when it becomes more difficult for other governments (such as the Swedish one, FT's note) to continue pretending that it would be impossible or especially difficult to stop third world immigration.