Goodbye Schengen, hello Rwanda
Germany is escalating the toughness of its migration policy. On Monday, interior minister Nancy Faeser announced that Germany will impose border controls with all nine neighbouring countries, effectively overriding the usual free movement within the Schengen zone. While these controls are initially set to last for six months, Germany has a history of extending such measures beyond their original timeframe. The land border controls with Austria, for instance, have now been in place since 2015 despite being initially scheduled for a few months.
The Schengen Agreement permits the temporary reintroduction of border controls only as a last-resort measure in exceptional circumstances. Over the past year, Germany has claimed several such 'exceptional circumstances', referring to events like the European Championship and the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games to justify land border controls with its neighbours. While several countries inside the Schengen area have implemented border controls before, Germany’s latest measure paints a grim picture for the European ideal of free movement.
 | Constanze Sendler The expansion of controls to all neighbouring countries is the latest escalation in the government's clampdown on immigration. Responding to voter worries over national security, the border checks are driven by the recent success of the far-right in state elections that we covered last week. In a legally contentious step, Germany's migration agreements commissioner has suggested making use of UK facilities in Rwanda to process asylum seekers – a proposal coming just after Germany's first deportations of Afghan nationals back to their homeland since the Taliban took power in August 2021. Faeser’s reintroduction of land border controls is coupled with a newly designed immigration scheme that enables authorities to reject migrants directly at the border. This model impacts the nine neighbouring countries as they might be requested to take back those denied entry. Although the interior minister is confident that the new scheme will reduce the number of asylum applications, those who want to enter the country will likely find other ways to do so. Migration cannot be managed in isolation and requires a coordinated European response. We can expect Germany's new scheme to create ripple effects, beginning with Austria's interior minister, who quickly responded to Faeser's announcement by stating that Austria would refuse to accept migrants turned away by Germany. The Netherlands have announced to check the implementation of border controls as well. |
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