Germany has begun a new border crackdown following two knife attacks attributed to migrants.
On Monday, Germany began random checks at it borders with five Western European nations expanding a system of controls that are already in place at four other borders.
Last month, a knife attack in Solingen killed three people and in June, a knife attack left a police officer dead and four other people wounded.
Police controls began on Monday at the borders with France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Denmark and are due to continue for six months.
Germany has already been carrying out the checks at its borders with Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland since last year.
The new measures mean border checks have been instituted in all of Germany’s nine land borders.
In June, a knife attack attributed to an Afghan immigrant left a police officer dead and four other people wounded.
On Aug. 23, a man linked to Islamist extremism killed three people and wounded eight others in a stabbing rampage at a festival in Solingen.
A 26-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker who had evaded deportation from Germany to Bulgaria, was arrested shortly after the attack.
Following the festival attack, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised to implement stricter knife laws and ramp up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers.
The border controls are controversial, because Germany is part of the EU‘s free travel arrangement known as Schengen.
Some neighboring countries have expressed their dismay at the move, which German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser says will deter “immediate threats of Islamist terrorism and serious crime.”
Earlier this week, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk denounced it as “unacceptable.”
Critics have also accused Scholz and his fellow policymakers of pandering to a vocal minority.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and to potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research in a statement.
The EU allows member states to temporarily reintroduce controls at the EU’s so-called internal borders in case of a serious threat, such as to internal security.
However it also says border controls should be applied as a last resort in exceptional situations and must be time-limited.
Border controls have previously been put in place during major sporting events, including the recent Olympic Games in Paris and the European soccer championship.
Scholz’s coalition government has come under pressure to crack down on irregular immigration after the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won its first state election in Thuringia.
In neighboring Saxony, it finished only just behind the CDU, which leads the national opposition.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press
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