Germany has informed the European Commission that it will impose border checks on all its national land borders for six months from next Monday.
Social Democratic (SPD) interior minister Nancy Faeser described the move as an effort to stem the inward flow of irregular migration in a way that conforms with EU law and its open border policies.
“We are strengthening our inner security with concrete action,” said Ms Faeser on Monday. Germany was obliged to protect itself “against the acute dangers of Islamist terror and serious crime”, she added, until the EU’s new common asylum system becomes reality.
The measures would be kept “as low-key as possible” for cross-border commuters, she promised, and resemble checks introduced last year on its borders to Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
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The announcement comes a week after a far-right state election win, a postwar first, where migration and security questions dominated.
Another state poll looms on September 22nd in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has demanded closed borders for much of the last decade, has a four-point poll lead there ahead of the ruling SPD.
Germany has nine national borders with other countries and all, apart from Switzerland, are EU member states. Last year Germany registered 300,000 asylum applications.
Until now Ms Faeser and her officials have argued that closing borders indefinitely and turning asylum applicants back contravenes EU law. Political pressure to evolve that position has building since a fatal knife attack in the western city of Solingen last month that left three dead.
The alleged perpetrator is a Syrian man who arrived in Germany via Bulgaria and remained on even after his asylum application had been rejected.
Germany’s centre-right opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) set the Berlin coalition a deadline of Tuesday to announce concrete proposals to curb irregular migration.
Of particular concern are the so-called Dublin rules, long considered dysfunctional, requiring the first EU country a person enters to process their asylum application.
Conservative and far-right politicians accuse their neighbours of waving through their own asylum applicants for Germany to process, house and feed.
The prospect of Germany turning back people at its borders has already set alarm bells ringing in neighbouring Austria.
It holds parliamentary elections on September 29th and the far-right populist Freedom Party (FPO), long a proponent of border checks, is leading polls on 27 per cent support.
In the last few days, the ruling centre-right People’s Party (OVP) has closed the gap with the FPO to two points.
On Monday Austria’s OVP interior minister Gerhard Karner insisted his country would not take in any migrants turned away at the German-Austria border.
“There’s no room for manoeuvre there,” said Mr Karner, to the Bild tabloid. “I have directed the head of the federal police to not allow any returns.”
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