German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has ordered passport controls to be resumed along all German land borders in a bid to sharply curb the number people entering the country without visas, government sources told dpa on Monday.
Faeser has informed the European Commission of the plans, the sources said.
The border checks are intended both to limit irregular migration as well as address threats from Islamist terror groups and cross-border criminal organizations, according to the sources.
All of Germany’s neighbours are fellow members of the Schengen Zone, which is normally supposed to allow control-free travel across all borders inside the bloc.
But in October 2023, Germany has already resumed some border controls along its frontiers with Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Poland to deter the movement of migrants into Germany.
Those border checks are officially on a temporary basis but have been repeatedly extended by Berlin. Similar controls on the border with Austria have been temporarily in place since September 2015.
The sources said that the current German coalition government has put together expanded plans to deny entry to some migrants at Germany’s borders in line with EU law. That comes after demands for such steps from the conservative CDU/CSU opposition bloc.
Further details on the proposal were not initially disclosed. Currently, asylum seekers are only rejected at German land borders in certain limited cases, such as if someone is banned from entering the country or chooses not apply for asylum.
