German residents in areas affected by a controversial clampdown on border controls have blasted the country’s chancellor Olaf Scholz, claiming the move is “completely political”.
Scholz introduced passport checks at all land crossings into Germany on Monday, as part of temporary curbs set to be in force for six months.
Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel, had notably more generous asylum policies, welcoming over 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers into the country between 2015 and 2016.
But the country’s stance appears to have changed considerably in the wake of terrorist attacks carried out by Syrian and Afghan asylum seekers, and the surging popularity of the hard-Right which has been critical of the government’s approach to immigration.
But critics claim a big motivation is pacifying the pressure put on Scholz’s goverment by Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), an anti-immigrant party which bagged its first ever election victory in the state of Thuringia this month, and who threaten to overtake the SDP in Brandenburg this weekend.
German border police appeared to stopping around one in every 40 cars at the border between Słubice, Poland, into Frankfurt an der Oder though the need for drivers to slow down through the checkpoint created delays.
Charlotte Grunberg, a 23-year-old politics student in Frankfurt told The Telegraph: “It is problematic for us because we are a Doppelstadt [two combined border towns], and a university town with many international students.”
“It’s completely political for Scholz, he is doing this because the AfD has gone after the issue of migration. People are thinking if there are no foreigners then things will be better, but it’s not true.”
Ms Grunberg was reportedly attending a small protest by campaign group Frankfurt Bleibt Bunt [Frankfurt Stays Colourful], where placards were held up reading “asylum is a human right” and “open hearts, open minds, open border”.
He said his message to the Chancellor would be: “Don’t break our Doppelstadt,” in reference to the “double town” status of the two communities.
But a passing dog walker said he was in favour of the move, telling the newspaper: “It’s a start. But it’s impossible to control the borders completely due to the political rules of the EU and that is the problem”.
Slubice residents interviewed were against the beefed up checks, with one saying: “We don’t like this situation, it’s not good for either side”.
The move has also caused a stir among Germany’s fellow EU members, as it rubs up against the spirit of the the bloc’s Schengen arrangements, which stipulates that member states within the zone must allow people to move freely.
Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said: “The response [to migration] cannot be unilaterally scrapping Schengen and dropping the ball to countries which sit at Europe’s external borders.”
Meanwhile Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said the new rules were the result of an “internal political situation”, adding that it may lead to “the de facto suspension of the Schengen agreement on a large scale”.
However, states with more Right-leaning leaders have used Scholz’s crackdown to legitimise their own calls to get rid of Schengen rules.
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