New police checks come into effect at Germany’s northern and western borders

From this Monday, Germany will randomly check passage through all its countries country borders with the aim of ‘combating irregular migration’.

The police will aim to ensure that these inspections “have as little impact as possible” on the daily lives of people travelling for work, as well as on the transport of passengers and goods, although it cannot be ruled out that the measures may cause delays, sometimes “punctual and temporary”, the Ministry of the Interior explained.

“There is no policeman checking every border crossing. The borders are not closed either,” he said. Sonja Koka spokesperson, during a press conference in Berlin in which she alluded to some of the misinformation circulating.

On the contrary, the checks will be flexible and will be installed where the police are aware of a certain irregular migration flow and they will only inspect those vehicles that arouse suspicion, Kock said.

These types of checks have already been carried out at Germany’s eastern and southern borders end of last year and did not cause significant queues at the border crossings Poland, Czech Republic, Austria or Switzerland.

According to the Interior Ministry, around 30,000 people who did not have the necessary documentation to enter the German state and who had not applied for asylum were rejected at these borders during this period, out of around 50,000 intercepted in total.

The measure, announced by the German government before the increasing pressure from the conservative opposition and the far right On migration policy, she has failed to satisfy that sector of the political spectrum that demands that asylum seekers also be rejected at the borders.

But the coalition led by the Chancellor Olaf Scholz stresses that this would not be in line with European law, as it is necessary to examine each asylum application individually or decide which European state is responsible for examining the case.

Since the organizations that support migrants and refugees and of the left There has been criticism that the pressure to turn away larger numbers of people at the border could lead to police irregularities, such as those reported several times at the border with Poland, and to demands for documentation based solely on racist stereotypes.

In addition, they have warned of a possible domino effectin which Germany’s neighbouring countries are also trying to shield their borders to avoid having to care for people who are turned away at the German border.