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Police union declares new border controls mandatory
| Reading time: 4 minutes
May 2020: Federal police checks on the border between Germany and Austria. At the moment there are only superficial controls of key points, criticizes the German Police Union
What: pa / EPA-EFE / LUKAS BARTH-TUTTAS / POOL
To prevent the introduction of Corona from neighboring countries, the German Police Union demands “intensive mobile patrols” of the border areas. Neighboring states are “far in the red.” The Interior Ministry reacts differently to spring.
reThe German Police Union (DPolG) calls for greater border control to contain the coronavirus. “If we want to contain the corona pandemic, we have to avoid unnecessary travel from foreign risk areas,” said WELT president of federal police union DPolG Heiko Teggatz. “That only works with better police controls at the borders with neighboring countries, which are fine in the red.”
At the moment, federal police are “very perfunctory with checkpoints” at state lines, Teggatz said. “It is not possible to verify the various entry regulations for people from foreign risk areas in this way.”
The DPolG had already pushed for the introduction of border controls in early spring. At the time, areas in Italy and Austria were hotspots for the pandemic; A new transmission of the virus by travelers had already been proven. Furthermore, Poland had already introduced controls at German national borders.
In mid-March, the federal government followed suit, closing many border crossings with France, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, and Luxembourg. From then on, federal police officers at the other border crossings ensured that only people with “good reasons” entered Germany. Among them were the Germans, as well as travelers and merchants.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior called this an important step in the fight against the pandemic. The controls “already contributed to the interruption of the infection chains due to the sharp reduction in cross-border traffic,” the Horst Seehofer department (CSU) said in May. There were also successes in the fight against crime. As WELT AM SONNTAG reported, in the first few weeks border officials connected online with nearly 2,000 people who were being wanted.
But the resistance against the regime was also great, especially in the border area. Southern German district administrators, mayors and members of the Bundestag complained about the controls, which led to family divisions and drastic losses in cross-border trade.
In June, Seehofer lifted the last internal border controls, because the number of infections dropped in the summer. However, the ministry had also warned in May: “If the infection rate changes in the respective neighboring country, the intensity of the control can be increased rapidly again in coordination with the neighbor. The guidance point is the reference value applicable in Germany for the infection rate of more than 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in seven days. “
This threshold has now been clearly exceeded in several neighboring countries. In the Czech Republic, according to the latest EU data, which only shows the increase in cases in the last two weeks, it is 770 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days.
In the Netherlands, the value is 485 and in France 365. According to the Federal Foreign Office, individual cantons in Switzerland are also considered a risk zone: Zurich, for example, which is only a few dozen kilometers from the German border.
The Interior Ministry doubts
In this context, the German police union now calls for a stricter regime. “We are calling for intensive mobile patrols in the border areas,” says Teggatz. “The federal police could check if there is a valid reason for entry or if the applicable quarantine and corona test requirements are being met otherwise.” So this is not about closing the border for many travelers like in May.
However, the “mobile patrol” would be a drastic step: “An intensive patrol of the border area represents the so-called border surveillance according to the Schengen Borders Code,” says European law expert Daniel Thym from the University of Konstanz WELT. This would be considered as the “reintroduction of border controls” and would have to be “notified” accordingly, that is, registered with the EU Commission.
Until now, the federal government has been reluctant to react to such considerations, unlike what happened in the spring. When asked if there had to be “border changes”, the Seehofer spokesman said last week: “Of course we are also looking at the infection rate in our neighboring countries.” There you can see “a very strong increase”. It is now trying with quarantine and test measures “to ensure what is necessary without having to think about other measures at the borders.”
What is meant is the new quarantine regime for travelers from foreign risk areas, which should come into effect in all federal states no later than November 8. According to the plans available so far, travelers from foreign risk areas will have to be quarantined for ten days in the future. In addition, they must document their entry by means of a “digital entry record”.
