The EU executive said Germany appeared legally justified in reimposing border controls on Sunday, especially on its Austrian frontier, and said it showed the need for EU states to agree a common approach to refugees.
“The temporary reintroduction of border controls between member states is an exceptional possibility explicitly foreseen in and regulated by the Schengen Borders Code, in case of a crisis situation,” the European Commission said in a statement.
“The current situation in Germany, prima facie, appears to be a situation covered by the rules.”
It added that the executive would keep the situation under review and said the aim would be to return to the normal situation of no border checks between member states of the Schengen zone “as soon as feasible”.
“The German decision of today underlines the urgency to agree on the measures proposed by the European Commission in order to manage the refugee crisis,” the Commission said.
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel shortly before her government made the decision public, has been pressing reluctant east European governments to support Commission proposals, which Germany backs, to redistribute asylum-seekers around Europe.
Juncker also spoke to the Hungarian, Czech and Slovak leaders on Sunday, seeking to break their collective resistance to his plans before EU interior ministers debate them at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Monday.
Among arguments EU, German and other officials have used to pressure leaders who say their societies cannot take in large numbers of immigrants have been warnings that a failure to fix a common plan on migration could wreck the Schengen open borders system which is especially valued in formerly Communist states.
“The free movement of people under Schengen is a unique symbol of European integration,” the Commission statement said.
“However, the other side of the coin is a better joint management of our external borders and more solidarity in coping with the refugee crisis. This is why Monday’s extraordinary council of interior ministers is so important. We need swift progress on the Commission’s proposals now.”
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Sunday that Germany had temporarily introduced controls along its border with Austria in an attempt to reduce the number of asylum seekers arriving in the country.
“At this moment Germany is temporarily introducing border controls again along (the EU’s) internal borders. The focus will be on the border to Austria at first,” he said.
“The aim of these measures is to limit the current inflows to Germany and to return to orderly procedures when people enter the country,” he said, adding that this was also necessary for security reasons.
Earlier Juncker voiced concern about the future of Europe’s open border system. “I just spoke with Chancellor Merkel. We agree: to keep borders open between EU-MS (member states), we need more Europe and solidarity in managing refugee crisis,” the EU chief executive tweeted, referring to his efforts, in conjunction with Germany, to promote an EU-wide distribution of asylum-seekers.
German warnings to its eastern neighbours that their own citizens’ much valued freedom to travel westward across the open borders of the Schengen passport-free area was under threat from the chaotic movements of refugees this summer have been part of a strategy to secure support for the EU executive’s plans.
The head of the German rail company told his Austrian counterpart that Germany was halting train traffic from Austria.
Thomas Strobl, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) told German newspaper Die Welt that he welcomed the controls.
“The controls that have been introduced on the border with Austria are the right thing to do. They’ll enable us to at least slow down the acute inflows of refugees,” he was quoted as saying.
A police officer at Munich’s main train station said Germany did not expect any more trains to arrive on Sunday evening.
About 13,000 refugees and asylum seekers arrived in Munich on Saturday and by Sunday afternoon another 3,000 had arrived.
Bild cited security sources as saying that the state government in Bavaria had asked the federal police to help deal with the task. The newspaper said the federal police would send 2,100 officers to Bavaria to help it secure its borders.
