Germany is expected to renew the controls on the German-Austrian border against the wishes of the EU Commission again. This announced Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) after SPIEGEL information in the Interior Committee of the Bundestag, as several participants reported consistently.
On Wednesday afternoon, Seehofer told journalists in Berlin: "As long as the European Union does not protect the external borders - and this is not the case - we will not be able to stop the border controls."
On request, a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said that the official decision to extend the checks will not be made until April. Accordingly, no letter had been sent to Brussels.
The controls on the German-Austrian border were introduced at the height of the refugee crisis in September 2015 and repeatedly extended by the Federal Government - most recently in autumn to early May 2019.
The so-called Schengen Borders Code allows only temporary internal controls in Europe. This requires exceptional circumstances that pose a serious threat to public order and internal security.
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The EU Commission had recently pushed for Germany and other countries such as Austria, France and Denmark to end their border controls. The time had come to repeal the temporary controls at European internal borders, said EU Home and Refugee Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos in December. The external borders are now better secured and fewer migrants arrive.
On the other hand, the Federal Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that it is estimated that 200 to 300 migrants in lorries hauled illegally into the EU alone across the Bulgarian-Turkish border.