Germany’s Border Policing Hits Its Limit

At Sigmarszell, on the German-Austrian border, the portable toilets tell their own story. They were put there for what Berlin presented in September 2024 as a temporary security measure. Nearly two years on, the same improvised infrastructure is still appearing at checkpoint after checkpoint, while federal police officers move from protest duty to border shifts to football matches with little time to recover (Tagesschau).

The operation has become part of the furniture. Uli Grötsch, the Bundestag’s independent commissioner for the federal police, says it cannot continue like this.

14,000 Officers, Fewer Migrants

Grötsch’s 2026 annual report, published this week, is blunt. Germany’s internal border controls are placing an "extraordinary burden" on the federal police and are no longer sustainable (RP Online).

Roughly 14,000 officers are now tied up at the borders. That means overtime, thinner cover at railway stations and airports, and fewer officers available for major events (Spiegel). It also means training and crisis readiness are being weakened, because instructors and specialist units are being pulled into checkpoint duty (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

At Bad Reichenhall, on the Austrian border, between 20 and 25 officers from a mobile surveillance unit are permanently assigned to a single crossing. They are therefore not available for work such as enforcing knife bans at Munich or Nuremberg stations (RP Online).

The case for maintaining the same scale of deployment is becoming harder to make. Irregular entries in the first half of 2026 fell to just under 25,000, about 22 percent lower than the previous year. Germany, though, has kept the same number of officers at the same checkpoints (Spiegel, Tagesschau).

Courts Rule Against, Controls Continue

The Munich Administrative Court has already found against the checks at the Austrian crossing in three cases. It ruled that their duration and design may breach the Schengen Borders Code, the EU rulebook that protects passport-free travel inside the bloc (Finanznachrichten/dpa-AFX).

But the court did not stop future controls. The practical position is awkward: travellers must submit to the checks first, then challenge them afterwards.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt accepts that the federal police are under pressure. He has said any extension beyond September will depend on three factors: migration trends, protection of the EU’s external border, and the bloc’s new asylum rules, which took effect on 12 June (n-tv).

The political logic is clear enough. If fewer people arrive irregularly, and if other EU states carry more responsibility under the reformed asylum system, Germany can begin to withdraw from the checkpoints. The problem is that none of Dobrindt’s tests has a public benchmark. There is no stated number at which the pressure is deemed low enough, and no clear point at which the new EU system is judged to be working.

The European Commission has urged Germany and eight other states to wind down internal controls and move instead to mobile, risk-based checks (The Brussels Times). But Schengen gives Brussels only limited leverage. A member state introduces the controls and informs the Commission afterwards. Brussels can review, press and eventually litigate. It cannot simply order the barriers lifted (Verfassungsblog).

Neighbours Bear Costs They Cannot Price

Germany’s neighbours are carrying costs of their own. Poland’s Border Guard checked 3.84 million people on its borders with Germany and Lithuania over one year, most of them on the German section (RMF24).

Luxembourg has a different problem. Its economy depends on about 230,000 cross-border workers who travel in each day from France, Belgium and Germany. Controls and transport disruption hit a commuting system already under pressure, with some workers saying they feel "taken hostage" (RTL Infos, Vosges Matin).

No neighbouring state has put a firm price on the disruption. Nor is any of them in a clean position to object. France has maintained its own Schengen controls since the 2015 terror attacks. Poland has extended checks with Germany until October. The more governments lean on the exception, the harder it becomes to accuse Berlin of abusing it.

Grötsch’s report also points to a civil rights problem. His office opened investigations into 33 racial-profiling cases and recorded a 58 percent rise in total submissions from the previous period (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Zeit).

The result is a familiar European compromise in its least comfortable form. Officers are exhausted by a deployment that keeps renewing itself. Travellers face checks that a court has already called unlawful in specific cases. Neighbouring economies absorb delays that are hard to measure but easy enough to feel.

Germany has normalised an exception to one of the EU’s core freedoms without producing evidence on the scale its policy requires. The police watchdog, the courts, the Commission and Germany’s neighbours have all arrived at much the same point: the operation is costing more than its results can justify. The answer now rests with Dobrindt. For the moment, he has offered a September deadline and three conditions that no one outside his ministry can properly test.