Week #4 (9/13-9/18)- Germany Imposes Border Checks Amid Migrant Wave (Wall Street Journal)

BERLIN—Germany started imposing document checks for people entering the country Sunday, seeking to stem the tide of migrants streaming in by suspending a cornerstone of European integration: open borders.

The temporary border controls—announced on the eve of a European Union interior ministers’ meeting on Monday to find measures to cope with the escalating migration crisis—came as a warning shot to other countries in the bloc. It indicated that Germany, the EU’s largest country and top destination for refugees and other migrants, was prepared to undermine Europe’s treaty on passport-free travel if other countries didn’t take in more of the hundreds of thousands of people arriving from the Middle East and elsewhere in search of a better and safer life.

Calling the move “a signal to Europe,” German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said that the government “will live up to its humanitarian responsibility. But the burden connected with the large number of refugees must be distributed in solidarity throughout Europe.”

Men, women and children from Syria and Afghanistan clung to a dinghy Sunday about 100 yards from the Greek island of Lesbos. PHOTO: ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS/REUTERS

The decision is an abrupt reversal from Germany’s decision to fling open its doors just over a week ago, when it and Austria agreed to allow in thousands of migrants being held back by authorities in Hungary. But as thousands more people cross into Germany daily, local authorities warn they are reaching their breaking point and running out of shelter space. Mr. de Maizière said the checks were aimed at curbing the flow of people into the country.

Some 40,000 migrants were expected to have arrived in Germany this past weekend alone, mainly crossing into the country from Austria—the initial focus of the border controls.

“Europe’s idleness in the migrant crisis is starting to push Germany close to its limits,” Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel in an interview published on Sunday.

Berlin’s move to instate the border controls shows how deeply the migration crisis is shaking Europe. The ability to cross from one European country into another without showing any documents, first enshrined in the Schengen Agreement of 1985, has been one of the most concrete benefits of the Continent’s integration for a generation of Europeans

In recent months, Europe’s open internal borders have meant that refugees and migrants arriving by boat on the shores of Italy and Greece have been streaming toward Germany, drawn by its healthy economy and generous social benefits.

The tide rose in recent weeks after Germany temporarily stopped enforcing, for Syrians, an EU rule requiring migrants seeking asylum to be processed in the first EU country they enter.

On Sunday, the German government temporarily shut off all train traffic to and from its southeastern neighbor Austria and ordered federal police to help secure borders in the southern German state of Bavaria. People entering the country from Austria will need to show documents, officials said, suggesting that other neighbors—such as the Czech Republic and Poland—could be affected in the coming days as well.

The Schengen rules allow for border controls to be temporarily reintroduced in the case of a crisis situation, and the European Commission—the EU’s executive body—said that Germany’s emergency move appeared to fit those requirements. German ChancellorAngela Merkel spent Sunday working the phones with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, French President François Hollande and European Commission PresidentJean-Claude Juncker.

Mr. de Maizière said the measures would be in effect for “a while” and warned of travel delays at the Austrian border. Sunday evening, Bavaria’s public broadcaster was reporting of a kilometer-long traffic jam at a crossing point near the Austrian town of Suben.

German national railway Deutsche Bahn said train services to and from Austria were suspended for 12 hours, at the request of German federal authorities, on Sunday afternoon.

EU interior ministers are meeting in Brussels on Monday to discuss proposals to redistribute 120,000 asylum seekers across the bloc, including 54,000 people out of Hungary, the entry point for many migrants coming to the bloc via Turkey and the Balkans. This comes on top of a previous plan to redistribute 40,000 people claiming asylum in Greece and Italy, which is set to enter into force on Tuesday.

Hungary and several other countries have so far opposed both plans, arguing that quotas would only attract more migrants and that border protection should be EU’s first priority.  German officials want other countries to contribute more resources of their own to responding to the migration crisis.  

“Those who seek asylum must accept that they cannot simply choose which member state of the European Union offers them refuge,” Mr. de Maizière said.
Other countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, counter that Germany bears a big part of the responsibility for solving the crisis because its perceived open-door stance and generous welfare benefits have attracted hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe. The key, those countries say, is deterring migrants from leaving their homes or refugee camps in the Middle East and making the dangerous, expensive journey to Europe in the first place.
The move also comes after a cry for help from Bavaria, a conservative stronghold and the state that has handled most of the arriving migrants over the past days. There has been growing domestic criticism elsewhere of Ms. Merkel’s decision to open the doors Sept. 4 to thousands of migrants waiting in Hungary with the aim of coming to Germany.
“There have been no rules for a good eight days—everything had been suspended,” said Bavarian State Governor Horst Seehofer. The head of the Bavarian sister party to Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, Mr. Seehofer has been one of the fiercest critics of the policy and said he had requested the decision to reimpose border checks.