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Germany is to introduce temporary controls along all its land borders, as the government steps up its response to public calls for a tougher approach on irregular immigration.
Interior minister Nancy Faeser said on Monday that the move — an extension of existing controls on borders with four countries — is designed to “further restrict irregular immigration and protect us from the acute dangers posed by Islamist terror and serious crime”.
“We will do everything to better protect people in this country,” she told reporters.
The new measures would come into force next Monday. Faeser added that the model would allow authorities to turn people away at the border in a manner that was “effective and compatible with European law”, though she declined to provide details on the categories of immigrant who could be sent back, and whether Germany’s neighbours had agreed to take them in.
Some politicians in the Green party, which is part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government, expressed concerns about the extended controls.
“The benefit from this is less than the damage we will inflict on Europe and on the Schengen regime,” said Erik Marquardt, a Green MEP. “They are creating the impression that it will be easy to turn people away at the border — and that’s just not realistic. Austria has already said it won’t play along with it.”
EU laws governing the bloc’s border-free Schengen area allow governments to introduce temporary border checks on security grounds. The controls can be rolled over every six months.
There were also warnings from Scholz’s and Faeser’s party, the Social Democrats. “It’s clear that border controls in the Schengen area cannot and should not be a permanent solution that we just get used to again,” said Dirk Wiese, a senior SPD politician.
Scholz has been under pressure to toughen up immigration policies since a terror attack in the western city of Solingen last month in which a suspected member of the Isis terror group fatally stabbed three people and injured another eight.
After the attack the government began deporting criminal asylum-seekers to Afghanistan, a move that had long been complicated by Berlin’s refusal to recognise the Taliban’s rule in Kabul. Faeser also announced authorities would cut benefits to refugees who were set to be deported, ban knives at big public events and allow police investigators to use facial recognition software.
Faeser said the introduction of temporary controls on its external borders had been highly effective, with 30,000 people turned away since last October along Germany’s borders with Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Switzerland.
Those turned back either had no documents, documents that were fake or “they were trying to enter [Germany] without a visa or valid residence permit”, the interior ministry said.
Controls are still being enforced on Germany’s borders with these four countries, but they would now be expanded to its borders with France, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Faeser said Germany was already turning back immigrants who had not claimed asylum.
Asked if Germany had co-ordinated the measure with its neighbours, Faeser said that was “going too far”, adding: “[But] we always inform them when we’re going to take such measures.”
Faeser also said she had informed the main opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union, of her plans and offered them “confidential talks” on the border control proposal. “We are prepared to discuss these and other questions together,” she said.
The CDU and its CSU sister party have insisted that more people are turned away at the border, as it seeks to capitalise on rising public dissatisfaction with the government’s immigration policies.
This month the Alternative for Germany won elections in the eastern state of Thuringia, the first time in the country’s postwar history that a far-right party had secured victory in a regional poll.
Immigration, an increase in the level of crime committed by foreigners and the dangers posed by Islamist terrorism were key elements of the AfD’s election campaign.