Germany reinstated border controls amid an influx of refugees that has overwhelmed authorities in the southern state of Bavaria and prompted police to ask locals for sleeping mats, blankets and water.
The temporary measure, which is focused on the southern border with Austria, became necessary to try and “limit the flood to Germany and return to an orderly process of entering the country,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Sunday at a press briefing in Berlin. Cross-border transport including train services could be affected, he said, adding that that the step “is urgently needed for security reasons.”
The re-imposition of border controls is a signal to Europe that Germany needs more help to cope with an estimated 800,000 asylum seekers expected to arrive in the country this year, said de Maiziere. Germany “stands by its humanitarian responsibilities,” he said, but the sheer number of refugees shows that “the burden must be shared with more solidarity.”
The move, announced at short notice, underscores the risk attached to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s strategy of welcoming refugees to Germany while fellow European Union leaders refuse to follow her lead. A meeting of justice and interior ministers in Brussels on Monday will deliberate EU proposals for distributing asylum seekers that eastern states have already rejected.
Austria is in “intensive talks” with Germany to tighten controls against traffickers and thereby prevent the situation from descending into “total chaos,” the government said in a statement.
The European Commission said the German decision “appears to be a situation covered by the rules” of the Schengen agreement eliminating internal borders between most EU members and other European countries including Switzerland. The goal must be to go back to open borders “as soon as feasible,” it said in a statement.
As well as stoking EU-wide tensions, Merkel has come under domestic criticism as she struggles to maintain public support for her stance. Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian prime minister and chairman of Merkel’s Christian Social Union sister party, told this week’s Der Spiegel magazine that Merkel’s decision “was a mistake that we’ll be dealing with for a long time.”
About 12,200 refugees, many fleeing civil war in Syria, arrived in Munich on Saturday alone with the number “staying constantly high,” Munich police said on Twitter. Merkel had lifted EU registration requirements for thousands of migrants seeking to travel north from Hungary.
“We made a decision last week in an emergency situation,” Merkel told a conference of her Christian Democratic Union party in Berlin on Saturday. “I think it was the right one, I’m very convinced of that.”