Germany will introduce extended border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic this week to curb illegal migration, the interior minister said on Wednesday, as a surge in migrant arrivals exposes the cracks in the European Union’s asylum system.
“If we do not succeed in better protecting the external borders …, then the open borders within the EU are in danger,” Nancy Faeser told reporters in Berlin.
Germany, which took in around 1 million Ukrainian refugees over the past year, has also seen a sharp rise in asylum seekers from other regions.
The increase comes as thousands of migrants traveling on boats from North Africa landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Germany’s neighbor Poland on Tuesday began conducting checks on some vehicles crossing the Slovak border, suspecting they could be carrying illegal migrants.
(Inputs from Reuters)