Germany bolsters Swiss border against refugees

The number of refugees trying to enter Germany through Switzerland has risen significantly in 2016, with the government reacting by increasing its border presence, according to reports.

Published: 22 August 2016 12:59 CEST

Germany bolsters Swiss border against refugees

Ther Swiss-German border at Kreuzlingen. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

Citing German police figures, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports that a total of 3,385 asylum seekers have tried to enter Germany through Switzerland since the start of the year.

In response, the German Interior Ministry has placed an extra 90 border guards and 40 federal police officers on the border, Swiss finance minister Ueli Maurer told NZZ am Sonntag.

The Interior Ministry in Berlin confirmed that the number of refugee arrivals through Switzerland had risen, but added that on a daily basis fewer than 50 people were arriving.

NZZ reports that when refugee accommodation centres become overcrowded in places like Chiasso along the Italian border, authorities will transfer asylum seekers to centres in Basel or Kreuzlingen — both of which are very close to the German border, and thus some may illegally cross into Germany.

“The development exists in connection with the still meaningful Mediterranean migrant route to Italy,” a spokesperson said.

The Interior Ministry spokesperson said that federal police are taking measures on the Swiss border “like the border controls which have been re-instituted on the Austrian border which are there to deter or prevent entry”.

According to Frontex, the agency that is responsible for controlling the borders of the EU, around 95,000 refugees have landed in Italy so far this year. In July alone 25,300 arrived, a 12 percent increase on last year.

Recently released figures show that Germany is turning away far more refugees at the border in 2016 than it did in 2015.

Up until the end of June border police stopped 13,324 people from entering the country, whereas in the whole of 2015 they prevented 8,913 from crossing the border.

Members of Die Linke (Left Party) in Germany have described the increase in turnbacks at the border as irresponsible.

“An inhumane mass-deportation practice has become increasingly established in Germany,” Ulla Jelpke, MP for Die Linke, said in a statement.

Switzerland has also come under fire in recent weeks for turning back migrants at the Swiss-Italian border if they do not lodge an asylum request in Switzerland.

The country doesn't want to become a transit route for refugees who wish to travel through Switzerland and claim asylum in Germany instead.

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.