Poland set to reinstate border controls along German border

Starting Monday, there will also be stationary border controls on the Polish side of the border between Germany and Poland. The Polish government had previously offered to waive these controls if Germany also ended its border controls. Green Party parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann accused Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and his government of jeopardizing European cooperation through their unilateral actions on migration policy.

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According to an announcement by Polish authorities, checks by the neighboring country's security forces are to begin at midnight on Monday. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has repeatedly made it clear that his country does not want this measure, but is reacting to the unilateral German approach. Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak commented: "If Germany abolishes its controls, we no longer see any reason to check people entering from Germany."

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German controls have already repeatedly caused disruptions and delays in cross-border traffic. There are fears that the Polish controls will now exacerbate this situation.

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Green Party parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann sharply criticized the federal government's actions. She accused Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) of jeopardizing European cooperation by acting alone. "Forty years after the Schengen Agreement, the unification of Europe, Friedrich Merz is causing immense damage in Europe," Haßelmann told the AFP news agency on Saturday.

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Those who suffer most from this policy of the CDU/CSU federal government are "not least the more than ten million people living in the border regions," especially commuters, as well as businesses and trade, Haßelmann continued. For them, the border measures would have "massive consequences." Germany, in particular, "depends on cooperation and open borders within the EU – every day," warned the Green Party parliamentary group leader.

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"The introduction of border controls on the Polish side is a direct response to the federal government's one-sided, anti-European law policy," Green Party interior politician Marcel Emmerich also declared on Sunday. "The Federal Minister of the Interior likes to portray himself as a law-and-order sheriff, but in doing so ignores constitutional principles and court rulings," he continued. He called on the federal government to "immediately end the illegal rejections and border blockades and to clearly commit to freedom of movement and a functioning Schengen area."

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Stationary border controls at the Polish border were introduced in October 2023 by then-Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) and later expanded to all German land borders. Immediately after taking office in early May, Dobrindt ordered further tightening of the measures and also instructed the Federal Police to generally reject asylum seekers directly at the border. Poland is also resisting this. On Friday, a case came to light in which an 18-year-old Afghan was repeatedly pushed back and forth between the German and Polish sides of the border.

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The rejections at the border are also legally controversial. At the beginning of June, the Berlin Administrative Court ruled in favor of three refugees from Somalia in an expedited procedure who had challenged their rejection without the Dublin procedure. Dobrindt nevertheless maintained his approach. He argued that the ruling only concerned the individual case. However, the court had determined that asylum applications must first be examined in Germany. 

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As the magazine "Stern" reported this weekend, citing information from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, there are currently three further legal proceedings in Germany related to the rejection of asylum applications at the border. CDU interior politician Alexander Throm reiterated in this context that the question of legality can only be fundamentally clarified by the European Court of Justice. In contrast, Green Party deputy parliamentary group leader Konstantin von Notz called Dobrindt's legal opinion "outlandish" and called on him to refrain from the rejections.

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