The end of Schengen
Germany’s decision to tighten controls at every one of its land borders seems driven chiefly by politics, is difficult to justify in law, deals a heavy blow to Europe’s prized free movement and could severely test EU unity.
Berlin said on Monday that controls in place at its border with Austria since 2015, and since last year with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, would be extended next week to France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.
The move would curb migration and “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime,” said Nancy Faeser, the interior minister.
The most recent in a series of deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers, in Solingen last month, came days before crunch regional elections in eastern Germany that resulted in the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party scoring historic successes in two states
Polls show migration is also voters’ biggest concern in Brandenburg, which holds its own elections in a fortnight – with Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic party forecast to finish behind the far-right party – and the chancellor’s ailing coalition seems to be heading toward a crushing defeat in federal elections next year.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and to potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.
said the new controls would include a scheme allowing more people to be turned back directly at the border, but declined to go into detail. Officials and diplomats in Brussels have expressed dismay, calling the move “transparent” and “obviously aimed at a domestic audience”.
Germany’s central position in the EU and its status as the bloc’s largest economy, mean the controls, due to come into force on 16 September for an initial six months, could have an impact that reaches far beyond the country’s voters.
In principle, Europe’s passport-free Schengen area, which was created in 1985 and now includes 25 of the 27 EU member states plus four others including Switzerland and Norway, allows free movement between them all without border controls.
Temporary checks are allowed in emergencies and exceptional circumstances to avert specific threats to internal security or public policy, and have typically been imposed after terror attacks, for major sports events and during the pandemic.
Increasingly, however, European governments, often under pressure from far-right rhetoric on immigration, have reimposed checks without the justification of concrete and specific threats, or clear arguments as to how controls can help mitigate them.