German borders to be tightened immediately by incoming minister

Incoming German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt plans to order increased rejections of migrants and more frequent checks at Germany's external borders a day after he assumes office with the new coalition government later this week.

"The first decisions will be made after taking office this Wednesday. This will include ramping up border controls and increasing rejections," Dobrindt of the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union (CSU) told Sunday's edition of the mass-circulation Bild newspaper.

There will be no border closures, the conservative politician said.

"The numbers of illegal migration must come down. To achieve both humanity and order, control, clarity and consistency are needed. We are preparing national and European decisions for this," Dobrindt further stated.

Observers expect that at least temporarily, more federal police officers will be sent to the border. However, what else might change remains unclear.

The German Police Union (GdP) reacted sceptically to Dobrindt's announcement. The GdP is also in favour of measures to curb irregular migration, said Andreas Rosskopf, chairman of the GdP for Federal Police and Customs. However, a significant increase in the number of police officers at the border cannot be sustained permanently with the current staffing levels, he added.

The union representative also expressed doubts about the announcements from conservative politicians to turn back asylum seekers at Germany's land borders without the consent of neighbouring countries like Poland or Austria. "There must be no ping-pong game with neighbouring countries from Wednesday," warned Rosskopf.

"If we are to turn back asylum seekers, it must be legally secure - and so far, I am missing the answer to that," Rosskopf said.

On Tuesday, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz is to be elected chancellor in the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag.

The new government is made up of Merz's CDU, its sister party the CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD).

The future head of the chancellor's office, Thorsten Frei of the CDU, recently announced stricter border checks from the first day of the new government - albeit with a time limit.

Initially, there were hardly any supporters of fixed border checks in the outgoing centre-left coalition, as these are not permitted in the visa-free Schengen Area of which Germany is a part.

Nevertheless, then interior minister Nancy Faeser of the SPD not only repeatedly extended the checks at the land border with Austria that began in 2015, she also ordered such temporary checks in mid-October 2023 for the borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland and notified the European Commission of the move.

Last September, she then decided that such checks should also be in place at the remaining border sections.

Last year, 229,751 people applied for asylum in Germany for the first time. This was about 100,000 fewer initial asylum applications than the previous year.

The main countries of origin currently include Syria, Afghanistan, and Turkey. A major reason for the decline, according to the head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), Hans-Eckhard Sommer, is that Serbia effectively closed the refugee route to Hungary in November 2023. Whether this will remain the case permanently is uncertain, Sommer said in a speech at the end of March.

In the coalition agreement, CDU/CSU and SPD have agreed: "We will carry out rejections at the common borders in coordination with our European neighbours, even in the case of asylum applications."

However, it remains unresolved between the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the centre-left SPD whether "in coordination" means obtaining the neighbours' consent or merely consulting them.