Migration: Faeser wants to extend border controls

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wants to continue border controls beyond March 2025. “Our comprehensive measures to limit irregular migration and combat smuggling crime are working,” the SPD politician told the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. “We need these controls until the protection of the EU’s external borders is significantly strengthened.”

Border controls are not actually planned in the Schengen area. In order to combat illegal immigration, Germany extended current border controls in the east and south of the country to the west and north in September for a period of six months. At the time, Faeser justified the ordering of stationary controls at all land borders with irregular migration and protection against Islamist terrorists and cross-border crime.

Controls were increasingly expanded

The borders with Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg were affected by the expansion. The border with France had already been checked because of the Olympic Games in Paris. Controls have been in place at the borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland since mid-October last year, and they were introduced at the German-Austrian land border in autumn 2015.

Faeser also said deportations have increased by over 50 percent in the past two years. “We have also deported dangerous criminals to Afghanistan for the first time – we are the only country in Europe,” she explained. “We will continue that.”