Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt says more police will be deployed; vulnerable individuals may still enter, but some asylum seekers will be turned away.
Germany’s new government plans to deploy additional police at its borders to curb illegal migration and even turn away some asylum seekers attempting to enter Europe’s largest economy, the new interior minister announced on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said border police numbers will increase in the coming days. He emphasized that vulnerable individuals would still be allowed in, but his assertion that Germany would reject some asylum seekers marks a shift beyond what the previous government was willing to do.
“We are not going to close the borders, but we will control the borders more strictly, and this stronger border control will also lead to a higher number of rejections,” Dobrindt said.
“We will gradually increase this higher number of rejections and stricter controls at the borders,” he added. “We will ensure that, step by step, more police forces are deployed at the borders and are able to carry out these rejections.”
The country’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had pledged to tighten migration policy during his election campaign.
In the weeks leading up to the February national elections, the conservative leader warned that he would block entry to those without proper documentation and increase deportations if elected chancellor. His remarks followed a knife attack in Aschaffenburg by a rejected asylum seeker, which left a man and a 2-year-old child dead.
Merz succeeds Olaf Scholz, whose government collapsed six months ago. Merz was elected by lawmakers on Tuesday and officially nominated as chancellor by the country’s president the same day.
Scholz, too, had been under pressure to rein in migration as shelters across the country had been filling up for years. His government sought to speed up asylum procedures and also negotiated agreements for countries to take back unsuccessful asylum applicants in exchange for more legal migration opportunities.
In February, just days before the election, Scholz’s administration extended by six months the border controls it had imposed across all borders the previous fall in an attempt to reduce the number of migrants entering the country. At the time, the government said the increased border checks had led to a decline in migrants trying to cross into Germany.
The European Union operates a visa-free travel area known as Schengen, allowing citizens of most member states to cross borders easily for work and leisure. Switzerland also belongs to Schengen, although it is not an EU member.
According to the EU, member states can temporarily reintroduce border controls in cases of serious threats, such as internal security. However, it also says that border checks should be used only as a last resort in exceptional circumstances and must be time-limited.
“We want this Europe of open borders to be possible again, but the current situation is one of open dysfunctionality,” Dobrindt said. “This must be corrected, and then we can very quickly return to a reduction of border controls.”
The far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, had also campaigned heavily on migration issues, calling for the deportation of “illegal immigrants.”
Last week, Germany’s domestic intelligence service classified the AfD, which came in second in February’s national elections, as a “far-right extremist” organization, subjecting it to broader and more intensive monitoring.
The agency described the AfD as a threat to the country’s democratic order, saying it “disdains human dignity,” particularly through what it called “continuous agitation” against refugees and migrants.
According to the EU’s border agency, Frontex, the number of irregular border crossings in the European Union dropped significantly in 2024.
In Germany, the number of people applying for asylum also fell sharply last year. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees reported that 250,945 people applied for asylum in 2024, down 30.2% from 2023.
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