Germany's border controls 'the new norm'? Is border-free Schengen Area area 'a thing of the past'?

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00:00Controls have been put in place on all of Germany's land borders.

00:03Starting this Monday, spot checks on vehicles crossing over are now extended to all nine of

00:08those land border crossings. The coalition government of Olaf Scholz saying it is taking

00:13more control over migration and asylum seekers. Critics question what the move means for the EU's

00:19free travel. It does come after local elections in Germany saw a sharp rise in support for the

00:25anti-immigration AFD party. Well to take a closer look we can speak now to Jacob Ross,

00:30research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Ross, let me start by asking you

00:37as far as you see it, why are these controls being put in place right now?

00:43Well as you suggested there's a lot of electoral reasoning going on in Germany right now. There's

00:50political infighting in the government coalition after they took two fairly big losses in regional

00:58elections two weeks ago. There's another regional election, an important one upcoming where the far

01:04right AFD party is leading the polls once again. And so the government coalition and Chancellor

01:11Scholz's SPD, social democrat party, are very keen to show that they control the problem that

01:20immigration is seen as at the moment with regards to interior security. A second point being that

01:28on a lower level in the cities many mayors and regional politicians are actually saying that

01:36the German capacity to take in refugees and asylum seekers is getting to an end. There's

01:44no more space for people to live in. Schools and hospitals are struggling to cope with the influx

01:53and so that's the situation we are facing today. So if the social democrats if you like are leaning

01:59into maybe the campaign pledges of the AFD, which we've seen in other countries in the EU,

02:04leaning more towards those right-wing parties, give us your analysis on that. Do you think that

02:08could help or hinder that coalition government? Well I mean the hope is that it will help,

02:17but as you say rightly so. We have seen the same going on for months or years now in France and

02:28other neighboring countries. It has helped in some countries, say Denmark, which is the northern

02:34neighboring country of Germany. It hasn't in others, but the coalition government is really

02:41in a situation politically right now in Germany that they need to test new solutions and so

02:49the hope is that this path will work and that it will work quickly because the most important

02:55elections will be the general elections that are coming next September. And can you briefly

03:01explain the explanation for UCEDD as this rise in support for those more right-wing anti-migration

03:09parties in Germany? Well I mean there's two sides to this. The first one being, as I said, that many

03:18communes, cities in Germany are feeling that they have reached the end of their capacity to take in

03:25asylum seekers and migrants, that schools and hospitals are simply full, that there's no more

03:34capacity. And the other point which has become more important these past weeks is a fear of

03:42incidents of terrorist attacks linked to asylum seekers and refugees. You had the attacks in

03:48Solingen at the end of August where three people were left dead by an asylum seeker from Syria

03:58and so these are the two major drivers that have been driving also the RFD in polls in regional

04:05elections and the fear is that this dynamic might hold up until the general elections in September

04:132025. Now these controls have been put in place to start with at least for six months.

04:18Where do you think this leaves the EU policy of freedom of movement?

04:25Well once again the fear is palpable both in Berlin by people opposing these measures but

04:33also in Brussels. I think that this will generalize throughout the European Union.

04:38There have been several member states who have installed border controls in the past but for

04:44limited time frame, say Germany on its southern border with Austria has had these kinds of

04:53controls since 2015. There have been also controls on the eastern borders to Poland,

04:59the Czech Republic and also Switzerland since October 2023 and now it's generalized to every

05:06other border but member states need to prove to the European Commission, to the European Union

05:13that these border controls are indeed linked to a specific situation, to an urgency and the fear

05:20is that this urgency might become the new norm and that Schengen regulations, so open borders

05:26within the Schengen area will become a thing of the past. Jonathan Ross, Research Fellow at the

05:33German Council on European Relations, thanks indeed for your time.

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