BERLIN — Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt will extend his government’s enhanced border checks beyond their provisional end date in mid-September.
Dobrindt moved to drastically bolster checks along the country’s national borders on his first full day in office at the beginning of May — angering Germany’s neighbors and the Polish government in particular, which retaliated diplomatically.
“We will continue to maintain the border checks and therefore allow border controls and rejections to remain in place beyond September,” Dobrindt told the Table Today podcast in an interview Thursday. With this, he confirmed upholding Germany’s most controversial border measure: namely, the rejection of undocumented migrants, including asylum-seekers.
A Berlin court ruled in June that the government’s push to turn away asylum-seekers at its borders violates European law. Dobrindt, however, challenged the scope of the court’s decision, suggesting it only applied to the three Somalis mentioned in that case.
Dobrindt’s migration shift is an apparent attempt to deliver on the conservatives’ campaign pledges to radically restrict the flow of asylum-seekers into Germany. Center-right Chancellor Friedrich Merz made those promises under pressure from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which surged in the polls on an anti-immigration message ahead of the Feb. 23 snap election and is now the largest opposition party.
“Migration policy has changed in Germany,” said Dobrindt on the podcast. “This is being observed worldwide, and has led to a new dynamic in the EU with regard to changes in migration policy,” he continued. “Germany is now back on the team, working to curb illegal migration, rather than sitting in the brake house,” added Dobrindt — who is vying to lead Europe’s anti-immigration turn.
The conservative Bavarian politician also said on the podcast that he is working on further deportation flights for criminal offenders from Syria and Afghanistan.
In mid-July, 81 Afghan nationals with failed asylum claims and criminal convictions were deported via Qatar. To facilitate further deportations, the government in Berlin has allowed two envoys from the ruling Taliban regime to work at diplomatic missions in Germany, according to media reports. This hints at possible restoration of diplomatic relations between Berlin and Kabul after all ties were cut following the Taliban’s takeover in the summer of 2021.
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