Will there soon be permanently stationed border controls on the German border with Poland? If Interior Minister Faeser has her way, then no. But there are criticisms and demands.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) does not want stationary border controls on the German-Polish border for the time being. In order to counteract the “growing migration pressure”, the minister announced that more police officers should be deployed in general in the future.
On Tuesday, Faeser said during a visit to a German-Polish police and customs cooperation center in Świecko, Poland, that in recent months, without stationary border controls, it has also been possible to reduce the very high migration numbers on the border with the Czech Republic. The forces there had been strengthened for this. This is now also planned on the border with Poland.
Arguments against border controls
Specifically, Faeser spoke of an additional personnel effort from “several hundreds” of the federal police. This step helps more than permanently stationed border controls. The close relationships between Germany and Poland in everyday life would be “massively disturbed” by such controls, said Faeser. In addition, the economic ties are much closer than, for example, on the border with Austria, where stationary border controls have been carried out for a long time.
Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) found clear words for the previous refugee policy of the federal government. “None of the federal government’s asylum policy measures are working and the pressure is increasing,” he said during the visit to Świecko. Border controls would be the quickest measure to set up and also the quickest to dismantle. In addition, no “full controls” are planned, he made clear.
The state secretary of the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior, Markus Grünewald, has already described the situation on the border with Poland as dramatic. If you extrapolate the number of previous illegal immigrations in Brandenburg by the end of the year, you can expect more than 10,000 cases. He also thinks border controls are necessary.
Criticism from the Union faction
From the point of view of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Minister Faeser is acting too hesitantly. “Mrs. Faeser will not be able to get the worst migration crisis in years under control with press appointments,” said the parliamentary group’s spokesman for domestic affairs, Alexander Throm. The Russian leadership is using irregular migration as a targeted means of destabilizing Germany. Therefore, the focus of unauthorized entries has shifted to the Polish border. Against this background, it was “irresponsible” that the interior minister did not order border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic, said the CDU member of the Bundestag.
Since the beginning of the year, Poland’s border guards have counted more than 10,000 attempted irregular border crossings at the border with Belarus. This was recently announced by the spokesman for the coordinator of the Polish secret services, Stanislaw Zaryn. For comparison: In the whole of 2022, 15,700 such attempts were registered. Poland fortified the land sections of the border with a 5.5 meter high fence last summer. On Monday alone, Poland’s border guards registered 67 attempted irregular border crossings.
At the refugee summit on May 10, the federal and state governments had agreed to introduce stationary controls such as those on the border with Austria, depending on the situation at other borders between Germany and neighboring countries. The number of unauthorized entries via Poland had recently increased significantly.
Source: Stern
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