BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – In April, significantly more people entered Germany illegally via the border with Poland than in the previous months of this year. In April, the federal police registered 2,427 illegal entries across the German-Polish border, according to a report by “Welt” (Wednesday) from a government response to a request from the domestic policy spokesman for the Union faction, Alexander Throm (CDU). In the months from January to March 2023, the value was below 1600. The government response is also available from the German Press Agency.
“The number of illegal border crossings on the German-Polish border is exploding and the Chancellor and the Interior Minister are watching idly,” Throm told the newspaper. In his view, Russia and Belarus are exploiting refugees to destabilize the West, and Turkey is playing along in this game. The federal government must set up stationary border controls at the German-Polish borders. “In addition, we expect Poland to better secure the EU’s external border.”
In the first quarter of the current year, the federal police registered 15,761 illegal entries, most of them via Poland, followed by Austria and Switzerland.
At the refugee summit last week, the federal and state governments spoke out in favor of expanding stationary border controls. “Depending on the situation, the federal government will also establish the existing border security concept in relation to Austria at other internal borders in Germany after consultation with the relevant federal states of the Federal Republic of Germany,” says the decision paper.
Actually, there are no stationary identity checks at the borders in the Schengen area, to which 26 European countries belong. In recent years, however, several states have used an exemption. Germany has been controlling Bavaria on the border with Austria since autumn 2015 after tens of thousands of refugees and other migrants made their way from Greece to Western Europe via the Balkan route./vrb/DP/ngu