Germany will implement tighter border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic to help fight people-trafficking, the country’s interior minister said on Tuesday, as a wave of migration boosts far-right support ahead of local elections, according to Reuters.
Nancy FaeserPhoto: Christian Spicker / imago stock&people / Profimedia
The country has taken in about 1 million Ukrainian refugees in the past year, and asylum applications unrelated to Ukraine have risen sharply. Local authorities say they are building new homes but are struggling to keep up with demand.
Concerns over migration have helped put the far-right, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party second in opinion polls nationally and first in the east of the country, ahead of elections on October 8 in the state of Hesse and Bavaria.
In an interview with Deutschlandfunk television, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), said Germany would institute stationary border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic.
“We will prepare stronger border controls to better fight human traffickers,” said Faeser, who is running for the post of premier of Hesse in the October 8 election.
Faeser did not say when the new measures would be implemented. Politico reported that the new controls will be officially announced on Wednesday. The Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Germany has maintained stationary controls at the Bavarian border with Austria since the 2015 European migrant crisis, when more than 1 million migrants arrived in the country, many of them fleeing war in the Middle East.
Then-chancellor Angela Merkel, a conservative, was praised for her policies at the time. Critics say this has helped fuel the rise of the far-right AfD.
The AfD is currently on course to win three regional elections in eastern Germany next year, scoring 32-35% there and 21% nationally.
