Faeser: Border controls will be extended for another two months

Federal Interior Minister Faeser announced in a newspaper interview that border controls would be extended for at least another two months. The police union is critical of this.

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has announced that border controls with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland will be extended beyond December 15th for at least two months. The SPD politician told the “Rheinische Post”.

“Our measures are working. Our fight against the unscrupulous business of smugglers, who brutally put people’s lives at risk, is successful,” said Faeser. Stationary and mobile controls are important in order to curb irregular migration to Germany and to relieve the burden on municipalities. The Federal Minister of the Interior extended the border controls on Monday until December 15th.

Police: Asylum problem cannot be solved by the police

According to the Interior Ministry, around 3,300 unauthorized entries have been detected and 1,100 unauthorized entries prevented since the controls were introduced on October 16th. “That means these measures are working and they should be continued,” said a spokesman.

Andreas Roßkopf, who is responsible for the federal police at the police union, told the “Rheinische Post” that the number of asylum seekers cannot be reduced through police means and that asylum applications cannot be prevented. What needs to be clarified is “whether thousands of police officers should actually remain at the border or whether they should be better deployed for security in the cities and whether the asylum problem should be solved within the EU framework.” The security situation at home is highly sensitive. The union suspects that the sharp decline in illegal border crossings in recent weeks can only be attributed to a small extent to the controls.

In 2023 more than 300,000 asylum applications

The number of unauthorized entries into Germany fell sharply in November compared to the previous month. As can be seen from a response from the federal government to a question from MP Clara Bünger (Left), the federal police detected a total of 4,353 unauthorized entries at the land borders from November 1st to 23rd and ordered 2,299 rejections.

According to statistics published on Thursday by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), 304,581 foreigners applied for asylum in Germany for the first time from the beginning of January to the end of November – around 60 percent more than in the same period last year.

Since a few weeks usually pass between entry and the formal application for asylum, the decline in border crossings by people without a visa is not yet noticeable in the Bamf’s statistics.

Significantly fewer unauthorized entries

In the month of October, 18,384 unauthorized entries were counted at the German land borders – the majority of them in the first half of the month. The comparison to the months of previous years also illustrates the currently relatively low numbers: In the entire month of November 2021, the federal police detected 7,543 unauthorized entries at all borders; in November last year there were 12,538 unauthorized entries.

“The Federal Interior Minister has currently followed our call to extend the successful border controls until European measures have a comparable effect at the Interior Ministers Conference,” said Saxony’s Interior Minister, Armin Schuster (CDU). “This clarification before the turn of the year is very important to us given the current security situation.”