According to Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the border controls due to the European Football Championship are already having an effect.
“During the temporary controls I ordered at all German borders, the federal police executed 173 arrest warrants and prevented 900 illegal entries within a week,” the SPD politician told Bild am Sonntag. “This shows that our measures are working. Above all, we want to identify and stop violent offenders early.” According to the newspaper, 1,400 illegal entries were detected during stationary controls between June 7 and 13.
During the European Championships, 22,000 federal police officers will be on duty every day to ensure security – according to Faeser, this is “the largest deployment in the history of the federal police”. “They are protecting our borders, airports and rail traffic.”
Because of the tournament, temporary controls will initially be in place at all German Schengen internal borders until July 19 – i.e. until a few days after the final on July 14. In addition, at the end of May the Interior Ministry announced that the stationary controls at the land borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, which have been in place since the beginning of the year, would be extended by six months. The reason given for this was the aim of combating people smuggling and limiting irregular migration.