Germany’s backhanded gift for Schengen’s 40th birthday: permanent “temporary” border controls?

By Johanna Hase

Border controls that were supposed to be temporary have become the new norm in the Schengen area. The result are high material and political costs and uncertain benefits.

Schengen should be in a festive mood: In June 2025, the small town in Luxembourg celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the agreement named after it. Together with the Schengen Convention signed five years later, it forms the legal basis for the abolition of border controls between Schengen member states in 1995. A whole generation has grown up since without border controls at internal Schengen crossings. The Schengen area has eased cross-border labour mobility and the exchange of goods and thus benefitted trade within the internal market. The absence of border controls is the symbolic and physical manifestation of Union citizen’s freedom of movement, which they value highly.

The return of border controls

However, these achievements are not to be taken for granted. The Schengen Borders Code (under Title III) allows member states to introduce temporary border controls as a measure of last resort in cases of a threat to public security and order. Member states have increasingly recurred to this option since 2015. Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France and Germany have controlled some parts of their borders for different reasons continuously since then, which puts their “temporary” nature in doubt. Reasons for the measures included major political or sporting events, the danger for public health arising from the COVID-19-pandemic, terrorist and security threats, and/or migration (in particular asylum-seekers moving onwards from their member state of first arrival – so-called “secondary movements”).

As of early June 2025, ten member states – the six mentioned above as well as the Netherlands, Slovenia, Italy, and Bulgaria – have notified the Commission of ongoing border controls, mostly for reasons of security and/or migration. Regularly, member states frame migration directly as a security and terrorist risk, while evidence shows that it is primarily social and local conditions rather than origin that drive criminality and terrorism. Indeed, border controls are not the most effective counter-terrorism measures. And they are also no silver bullet to sustainably limit irregular migration: Controls can indeed lead to more apprehensions and rejections in the short term, but migrants – and smugglers – often adapt and tend to take different routes in the medium term.

It is therefore questionable whether internal border controls are efficient measures to address irregular migration and security threats sustainably. At the same time, they may undermine the achievements of the Schengen area: Border controls negatively influence the internal market through waiting time at borders for goods and commuters, they limit Union citizens’ freedom of movement, and while some argue they are implemented in a kind of “cooperative re-bordering” between EU member states, others argue it diminishes mutual trust among them.

The Commission has remained inactive

Facing these “temporary” border controls, academics as well as other European institutions, like the Parliament, have criticised the Commission for not embracing its role as a guardian of the treaties strongly enough. 

Against the difficult political background of the negotiation of the reforms of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the Commission prioritised coordination and accommodated member states’ wishes, for instance by tabling a proposal for a reform of the Schengen Borders Code that raised the maximum time limit for temporary border controls from six months to up to three years under certain conditions. Overall, it seems that some degree of seemingly “temporary” border controls has become accepted in the supposedly borderless Schengen area.

From frontrunner to laggard: Germany in Schengen

Germany is one of the five original signatories of the Schengen agreement, along with France and the three Benelux states (the latter having abolished border controls between them already in 1960). With these partners, Germany had politically championed the borderless Schengen area, which was only integrated in primary EU law with the Amsterdam Treaty entering into force in 1999.

In contrast, Germany is today among the champions in terms of length of internal border controls, having continuously controlled its border with Austria since 2015. Back then, “secondary movements” of asylum-seekers were the core reason for re-introducing border controls. Ten years later, it remains dominant in the debate in Germany, as it is still the main recipient of this type of migration.

Intensifying debate on border controls

This German debate about border controls has intensified in the past year. Against its original intentions to “reinstate the integrity of the Schengen area”, the traffic light coalition, which came to power in 2021, repeatedly prolonged existing controls and introduced border controls with Poland, Czechia and Switzerland in October 2023. During the European football championship in summer 2024, all German borders were subjected to controls in a classic case of genuinely temporary controls. After a Syrian national, who should have been returned to Bulgaria under Dublin rules, committed a deadly knife attack in September 2024, former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the social-democratic SPD (PES) reintroduced these controls. Following a series of further deadly terrorist attacks and amidst a heated election campaign with a focus on migration, she extended them until September 2025.

In early 2025, in the midst of this election campaign, the Christian Democrats (CDU/EPP) and Christian Socialists (CSU/EPP) tabled a non-binding proposal on migration in the German Bundestag. It was only passed due to the support of the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD/ESN) – and therefore highly controversial. Parts of this non-binding five-point-plan ask for permanent – not only temporary – controls and the rejection of asylum-seekers at all German borders. This latter idea had already been pushed by former Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU/EPP) in 2018. Back then, it was abandoned due to conflicts with European law, in particular the Dublin regulation.

Going to the courts

The recent coalition agreement between social democrats (SPD/PES) and conservatives (CDU-CSU/EPP) provides for border controls at all borders “until a functional external border protection and the implementation of the existing Dublin and CEAS rules are achieved by the European community” at some undetermined point in the future as well as rejections of asylum seekers “in coordination” with European neighbours. The new conservative Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt (CSU/EPP) has intensified existing border controls on his first day in office and mandated police officers to refuse entry to non-vulnerable asylum-seekers at the borders. A week later, he claimed success pointing at 739 rejections of people at the German borders compared to 511 the week before he took office.

Most legal experts consider these rejections to be in breach of European law, as Germany is obliged to let asylum-seekers enter in order to determine which member state is responsible for processing the request under the Dublin rules. The government’s reasoning that the pressure on municipalities and disproportionate number of asylum-seekers in Germany justify its measure under Article 72 TFEU, which allows member states to derogate from EU law in exceptional circumstances, has also failed to convince a local court in a first lawsuit on the matter. Many legal experts also argue that the border controls as such are contrary to European law, and indeed, some lawsuits have also been filed and others won with the claim that they violate Union citizens’ freedom of movement.

Political criticism – but still high polling for border controls

Politically, police representatives have pointed to a higher workload that could not be upheld in the longer term. Increased reports of discriminatory racial profiling are connected also to the border controls. The coordination with neighbouring states on rejections seems not to be working seamlessly either, even though many of them support a restrictive migration policy: Luxembourg has sent a formal letter of complaint to the Commission, Poland has not accepted rejected asylum seekers and warned to close its border, Austria has sent ambiguous signals, and Switzerland has threatened countering measures.

Within the German public, though, acceptance of both border controls and rejections of asylum-seekers is almost as high as the appreciation for the freedom of movement: While only half of respondents in a survey in May 2025 thought them to be effective in deterring asylum-seekers, around two-thirds supported the continuing rejections in a different survey, even after they were deemed unlawful by a court. Overall, Germany seems to have shifted from championing an area without internal borders to being one among several member states rebuilding borders in that area.

Policy recommendations to the new German government

The material and political costs of Germany’s border controls and the rejection of asylum-seekers at the borders are high compared to their very uncertain benefits. They may well breach European law by depriving Union citizens and asylum-seekers of their rights and undermine mutual trust among member states. The new German government should therefore stop rejections at the borders, phase out border controls and instead:

• Evaluate the effects of border controls objectively. Suggesting to the public that border controls will be an easy solution to reduce irregular migration, for instance by citing absolute numbers of rejections or the dropping of asylum applications in 2024, is factually misleading. In fact, asylum applications went down in 2024 in Europe generally. This rhetoric may backfire when the promises are not fulfilled. Instead, the government should work with scientists to objectively evaluate their intended and unintended consequences and communicate this clearly.
• Implement CEAS reform while safeguarding the right to asylum. The governments’ focus should lie on the implementation of the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and on diplomatic efforts to realise the solidarity component in it, which may help to alleviate the strain on member states’ asylum reception systems. Instead of rejecting asylum-seekers at the border and risking a domino effect in other member states, eventually leading to even more unlawful pushbacks at EU external borders, the coalition partners should make sure that procedural safeguards and monitoring mechanisms are adhered to across the EU when implementing CEAS.
• Cooperate with European neighbours through exploring alternative measures. Several Commission initiatives and the changes to the Schengen codex in 2024 have encouraged the use of alternative measures instead of border controls. Such measures, including cross-border policy cooperation, random policy checks in the border areas, or a new transfer procedure of people without an entry permit or a wish to claim asylum, have also been criticised. Nevertheless, they arguably do less harm than border controls, are smarter ways to address security threats, and have not been fully exhausted yet. They also are a way of genuine cooperation with neighbouring governments and within border regions that does not risk undermining mutual trust in the EU.

Unfortunately, the new German government seems set on maintaining border controls with all neighbouring countries for the foreseeable future, likely beyond September 2025. This is a backhanded gift for Schengen’s 40^th birthday. Hopefully, it will be more of a celebration when Schengen turns 50 in ten years.

Johanna Hase is a Research Advisor at Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP) in Berlin.

This article was first published in the Berlin Perspectives series of the the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP).

Pictures: Traffic cones: Andres Nuñez [Unsplash License], via Unsplash; portrait Johanna Hase: Institut für Europäische Politik [all rights reserved].