Statement regarding German border controls

On 9 September 2024, the German Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, announced that temporary controls would be introduced at all German land borders next Monday. The reasons given to justify this were to limit irregular migration and to protect internal security from the current threats posed by Islamist terrorism and cross-border crime. Such controls had already been in place for a few months prior to the men's European Football Championship, and before that during the Covid pandemic.

Volt strongly condemns these controls. For one thing, these controls violate the Schengen Agreement, which abolished stationary border controls at the internal borders of participating states. These new border controls are completely arbitrary and anti-European. Germany only borders on countries that are in the Schengen area and, apart from Switzerland, only on EU countries. There is no significant reason why the freedom of movement of all citizens who are in the Schengen area should be restricted in this way. Germany has no major problem with irregular migration or with crime coming from abroad. The problems that do exist can be solved within the country and there is no danger that would come upon other European countries – it is a spectre of populist xenophobia, probably the knee-jerk reaction of a supposedly social democratic government, explained by the successes of the right-wing extremist party AfD. Apart from all that, it is not even clear what exactly should be checked during these border controls. Not least, it costs the German state an enormous amount of money that would be better invested, and it costs civil servants who are needed elsewhere because they have to stand on motorways and carry out randomly ordered checks with no purpose or sense.

This action by a single country shows two things: firstly, that we are not safe from fascism, racism or arbitrary discrimination within Europe, and secondly, that the EU and the Schengen Agreement are not strong enough and that we need a federal Europe in which countries cannot easily implement arbitrary acts of restriction of freedom that violate human rights.

Volt recognises that Europe does not have a good migration policy and that many grievances can be traced back to this. We are also aware that a poor bureaucracy, a lack of distribution of refugees across all European countries and politicians who mostly just stand by and do not react can lead to feelings of foreign subjugation, being overwhelmed and being helpless. Volt has already made extensive proposals in its programme for the European elections on how to implement better refugee and migration policies. (Moonshot Programme, Humane Migration, pp. 59-81)

Only together can we solve the problems of the 21st century, only together are we strong. That is why we strongly condemn Germany's arbitrary border controls.