The German government has announced that it will be extending border controls with several European countries, including the Czech Republic and Austria, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz has stated that he is open to a proposal that could see asylum seekers taken to non-European Union countries to process their claims.
Germany is expected to continue border controls with Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Poland as a paper of the Conference of Prime Ministers stated, “The German states concerned and the Federal Police are working closely together in the fight against smuggling and irregular immigration,” Kleine Zeitung reports.
So far this year, Germany has already exceeded the number of asylum applications seen in 2022, with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) stating that as of September the country had seen 233,744 new asylum claims.
The border control policy was proposed to the European Commission last month as Germany, a European Union member state, must clarify the justification for the emergency controls, which depart from the free movement of the Schengen Agreement.
Initially, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser requested a border control period of just ten days but with the option to extend the period up to two months.
The border control proposal was criticised by Konstanz District Administrator Zeno Danner who said that border controls were not the solution to the ongoing migrant arrival surge and that the issue should be dealt with on a European, rather than a local, level.
Danner’s district lies on the Swiss border, where by the end of August, over 9,400 asylum seekers had crossed from Switzerland into Germany, including around a thousand unaccompanied minors.
Mayor of Freiburg Martin Horn was also critical, saying he believed the move was a “political warning signal” and did not want to see a return of permanent border controls.
The extension of border restrictions comes amid a number of other modifications to immigration policy in Germany, including an agreement between the federal government and the state governments on the distribution of costs for asylum seekers after months of discussion on the subject.
Starting next year, the federal government will give state governments a sum of 7,500 euros for each new asylum seeker in order to help local governments deal with the costs of new arrivals.
Courts are also expected to process future asylum claims in a much more streamlined and expedited manner, with decisions by the courts and by BAMF estimated to take no more than six months.
Migrants coming from countries that have low levels of refugee acceptance could see their claims decided in as little as three months.
Chancellor Scholz also stated that in order to save costs, the asylum seeker benefit could be extended from 18 to 36 months in cases where the asylum application processes took an extended period of time.
Under the current policy, asylum seekers are given accommodation along with food, healthcare, clothing and limited cash benefits but when those expire they are given money that approaches regular state benefits, increasing costs for German taxpayers.
Germany is also one of several European countries now considering outsourcing asylum claims to third-party countries outside of the European Union.
Ann-Veruschka Jurisch of the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP), a member of the ruling coalition along with the Greens and Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), raised the issue of outsourcing asylum claims, noting it was a part of the coalition agreement signed between the three parties.
“I expect the interior minister to review as soon as possible how processing asylum claims in third countries can be facilitated, as this is what we agreed in our coalition agreement,” Jurisch stated.
On Tuesday, November 7th, Chancellor Scholz addressed the matter, saying that he would examine whether such a policy could be implemented.
“The Federal Government will examine whether the protection status of refugees can also be determined in transit or third countries in the future, in compliance with the Geneva Convention on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights,” Scholz said but added, “There are also a whole series of legal questions.”
A big factor in implementing such a policy could be the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which pushed back at a similar policy proposed by the United Kingdom to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to process their claims.
The ECHR grounded the first flight of asylum seekers in June of last year and, despite the UK agreeing to a deal with Rwanda worth nearly £150 million, no asylum seekers have been sent to the country since.
Germany could, however, take the approach French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has proposed regarding the ECHR. Darmanin stated that France could physically deport dangerous illegal migrants before the ECHR has any time to review their case or make a ruling, accepting a fine of around 3,000 euros per deported migrant.
