Alexander Dobrindt wants to send 3000 police officers to border

The new Federal Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) wants to ensure a decline in irregular migration with more police officers on the German land borders and stricter rules. A few hours after taking office, he announced that asylum seekers should also be rejected at the border in the future. An oral instruction from 2015, not to do this, will now withdraw in writing.

It is not about rejecting everyone from tomorrow, but about “that we reduce the numbers,” he said. Pregnant women, children and other relatives of vulnerable groups would not be rejected, said Dobrindt. He is concerned with a “signal into the world and to Europe” that “politics in Germany has changed”.

The CDU, CSU and SPD coalition agreement had been agreed: “In coordination with our European neighbors, we will also make rejections at the common limits even in the event of asylum requests.”

Dobrindt now said: “We keep our neighbors in close coordination.” He and Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) had already had discussions in the past few days. At his first press conference as Federal Minister of the Interior, Dobrindt was accompanied by the President of the Federal Police, Dieter Romann.

In the traffic light coalition, there were hardly any supporters of fixed border controls, which are actually not intended in the so-called Schengen area. Nevertheless, the former Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) had not only extended the controls on the land border to Austria in 2015.

In mid-October 2023, she also ordered such temporary controls for the borders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland and notified the EU Commission. Last September, she decided that there should also be fixed controls – which are a prerequisite for rejections – also on the remaining border sections.

Last year, 229,751 people submitted an asylum application in Germany for the first time. That was around 100,000 asylum applications less than in the previous year. The main countries of origin currently include Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey. According to the head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), Hans-Eckhard Sommer that Serbia actually blocked the refugee route to Hungary in Hungary in November 2023 is a main cause of the decline. It is open whether this will remain the case permanently in a speech at the end of March.

Dobrindt’s decision criticized the domestic political spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, Marcel Emmerich. He said, “This policy is wrong because it harms people and the economy.” These rejections contradict EU law. “Such sole proceeds, which holds Europe together.”

Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster was satisfied. The CDU politician said that the intensification of border controls was good news for Saxony and a “long overdue step that we and other Union-led countries have long demanded”.