Migration: Border controls start on Monday – “End of the spirit of Schengen”, criticises Poland

Last week, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) ordered that there should be stationary controls at all national borders from Monday. This affects France, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. In Lower Saxony, the announced stationary controls will begin on Monday morning at the border with the Netherlands.

From midnight onwards, additional federal police officers will be on duty to check people entering the country from the Netherlands on the Lower Saxony side. Such controls already exist at the borders with Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.

Fixed border controls are not actually planned in the Schengen area. The reasons for this arrangement are to further limit irregular migration and to protect internal security, particularly against Islamist terrorism and serious cross-border crime.

Cross-border rail traffic is also being monitored more closely. According to the Federal Police, the impact on commuters and other passenger and goods traffic is to be kept as low as possible. Travelers should have an identity card or passport and, if necessary, a residence permit ready when crossing the border.

“Unusual art of dealing with one’s neighbours”

Poland, meanwhile, sees the introduction of border controls at all German external borders as a strain on relations between the two countries. “We were not informed in any way in advance,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Teofil Bartoszewski told Stern magazine on Friday. “We found out about it when the German Interior Minister made the decision public.” Bartoszewski criticized this as “a somewhat unusual way of dealing with one’s neighbors.”

He added: “You cannot surprise your neighbours with such decisions. That is not how you treat partners.” The introduction of border controls is the “end of the spirit of Schengen,” he said, referring to the European area in which free movement of people and goods is usually guaranteed.

Meanwhile, the German government does not see any strained relationship with Poland. “I cannot see any strain there,” said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit on Friday in Berlin. The discussions on migration policy that are being held here are also being held by Germany with its European neighbours.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is also in contact with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “We are working very closely with the new Polish government,” emphasized a spokesman for the Foreign Office.

Border controls at all German land borders are to begin on Monday and will initially last for six months. However, controls have been in place at the borders with Poland since October last year – “closely coordinated” with Poland, as a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said on Friday. For the country, “nothing at all” will therefore change. The expansion from Monday will extend to Germany’s western and northern borders.

Deputy Foreign Minister Bartoszewski also rejected allegations that Poland was involved in the blowing up of the two Nord Stream pipelines in the “Stern” magazine. “There is no evidence whatsoever that we supported this group in any way,” he said. “Instead of complaining that they were destroyed, the Germans should think about the reasons why they were built in the first place.”