BERLIN — With another possible far-right election victory looming in 11 days and his coalition plumbing new depths in polls, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his ministers appear to be grasping at straws when it comes to migration.
Earlier this week, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced new border controls that threaten to undermine one of the pillars of the European idea — freedom of movement over national borders.
“We are strengthening our internal security through concrete action and we are continuing our tough course against irregular migration,” said Faeser at a press conference at which she announced checks on all German land borders. “Until we achieve strong protection of the EU’s external borders,” she added, “we need to strengthen controls at our national borders.”
The announcement was the latest in a series of tougher migration measures German ministers have announced following a series of high-profile attacks allegedly perpetrated by people who entered the country as asylum-seekers, including a knife attack carried out by a Syrian man in the western city of Solingen in August, an incident Scholz referred to as “terrorism against us all.” The move also comes soon after the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party scored the first major election victory for a far-right party in the country since World War II.
After the Solingen attack, Germany announced a plan to speed deportations and cut benefits for certain asylum-seekers in the country. German authorities also deported 28 Afghan nationals convicted of crimes to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The latest border measures are intended to “further limit irregular migration and to protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terror and serious crime,” Faeser said.
But the announced measures — specifics of which have yet to be fully disclosed — have sown confusion and alarm among Germany’s neighbors, who fear the ramifications for Europe’s border-free zone, the so-called Schengen Area, and the knock-on hit to the European Union’s economy.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sharply criticized the German plans in Warsaw. If German leaders follow through on tighter controls, it would lead to the “de facto suspension of the Schengen agreement on a large scale,” he said.
“I have no doubt that it is the internal political situation in Germany that is causing these steps to become more stringent,” Tusk said.
Germany had already been conducting checks on its borders with Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. German authorities have turned back some 30,000 people without valid documents at these borders since October of last year, according to Germany’s interior ministry. The announcement this week concerns the expansion of those checks to borders with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark.
Polish leaders fear Germany will tighten the ongoing controls, which have led to traffic jams on the border, and Tusk stressed Warsaw would “reach out to other countries affected by Berlin’s decision for urgent consultations.”
Tusk also canceled his planned attendance at an event in Potsdam later this week, where he was scheduled to meet Scholz, though the reason remained unclear.
While Scholz’s coalition is under pressure abroad not to take actions that would crack apart the Schengen Area, it is under rising political pressure at home to turn back migrants at the border.
Members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have been pushing Scholz’s government to turn back asylum-seekers attempting to enter Germany from other EU countries — a move that would likely create a domino effect across Europe, experts say, with other countries closing their borders to asylum-seekers too.
Ministers in the coalition government have instead advocated implementing fast-track procedures to deport asylum-seekers to other EU countries deemed responsible for processing their claims.
Members of the opposition CDU on Tuesday took part in a summit with coalition leaders with the stated aim of reaching a cross-party agreement on such stricter border measures. But CDU politicians broke away from those talks when it became clear, as they put it, that the coalition government was unwilling to go far enough.
“The federal government is obviously hopelessly divided internally and cannot agree on effective measures,” declared CDU leader Friedrich Merz in a post on X. The coalition, he added, “is obviously hopelessly divided internally” and “incapable of action and lacking leadership.”
The coalition’s announcement on new border measures comes ahead of a key vote in the eastern German state of Brandenburg on Sept. 22. Polls show the AfD leading the contest, beating out Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has led the state without interruption since reunification.
Earlier this month, the AfD won an election in the eastern state of Thuringia and came in a close second behind the CDU in Saxony.
The far-right win and the dismal performance of the three parties in the coalition government — the SPD, the fiscally conservative Free Democrats and the Greens — in the election were a further embarrassment for a government that was already reeling after a historically bad result in the European election in June. In that vote, the SPD had its worst performance in a nationwide election in more than a century.
Another far-right victory in Brandenburg would only add to speculation that the coalition may not last until the next planned federal election, scheduled a year from now, particularly as the coalition government has hit a new low in approval ratings, according to the benchmark Deutschlandtrend poll.
The preelection attempts at cracking down on migration appear to be in part aimed at foiling the AfD, which has soared in popularity amid a sharp rise in the number of asylum-seekers arriving in Germany.
But many migration experts and political analysts warn that the increased national border controls don’t provide a long-term fix — and may only end up inspiring a further backlash when voters see the measures don’t work.
Green politicians also warned their own coalition partners not go bow to the demands of conservative and far-right forces.
“A united Europe without border fences and walls is a great gift,” Ricarda Lang, co-leader of the Greens, wrote on X. “It is worrying how many are prepared to give up this freedom lightly. We must protect this Europe.”