Is Germany about to close its borders? Ever since a Syrian refugee, apparently
radicalized by Islamic State, attacked and killed random people
at a festival in Solingen, politicians have been scrambling
to reassure everyone that they are doing something —
anything — to keep Germany safe. And one of the proposals is to have
passport controls on all of the country’s borders. And that’s a pretty big deal, because permanent border controls
were actually abolished — in the 1990s. This is because Germany is
a signatory to the Schengen Agreement. Most, but not quite all, EU countries
are Schengen states, as are a few European countries
that are not actually in the EU. Not only is Germany a Schengen state, but so are all of its neighbours. And so there are supposed to be
no passport controls on any land border. But the Schengen Agreement does allow
temporary border controls when necessary. In fact, there have been temporary checks on
the Austrian border since... 2015, and temporary checks on the Polish,
Swiss and Czech borders since last year. The plan now is to have checks
on all the borders... temporarily. This doesn’t necessarily mean fences
and border guards with guns; it’s more likely to mean spot checks
at the busiest crossing points. For most travellers and commuters this is likely
to mean delays at least from time to time. But it has to be said that
where passport controls are currently in place, we haven’t seen many of the very long tailbacks
we used to have before Schengen, when waiting times at crossing points were
a regular feature of travel news bulletins. Now, although Solingen was the incident
that prompted this new policy, it’s unlikely that it would have
prevented it from happening. It is true that the suspect in this case
avoided being deported back to Bulgaria until Germany became legally responsible
for processing his claim. But these border controls might not have prevented
him from entering Germany in the first place. More measures are required, and this is
what German politicians are now arguing about. And tempers are clearly frayed, with the chancellor and the leader of
the main opposition each accusing each other of causing discussions to fail. Basically, the government,
headed by chancellor Scholz, invited the main opposition group,
the Union, headed by Friedrich Merz, to discuss the issue and figure out a plan. But not long after talks began, Merz walked out, claiming that the government was simply
not willing to do what was necessary. Scholz then claimed that Merz had
no intention of working with the government, and had wanted discussions to fail. He accused Merz of... ...a lack of character, honesty and consistency, and of conjuring tricks and amateur dramatics. Ouch. Whether any of that is actually true, I can’t say. But the basic argument is something like this: we do agree that we need to manage
the numbers of people coming into the country; how do we actually do that? The opposition wants to see asylum seekers
simply turned away at the border. And that’s as simple as it sounds: if you’re an asylum seeker,
you won’t be allowed to enter Germany; you’ll have to apply in the country
where you first set foot in the EU. The government fears that this may
actually be illegal: according to international treaties
you can’t turn away people claiming asylum until you have at least looked at their case. The Union argues that EU law
gives member states the right to act in the interests of their own security. In addition, the government argues that
if you turn people away at the border, they’re just going to sneak in some other way. What you need to do is detain them,
make sure they stay detained, then use the legal mechanisms that already exist to return them to where
they should be claiming asylum. So the government’s proposal is to
build detention centres near the borders and make sure asylum seekers can’t simply vanish
when a deportation order comes through. In addition, they want the legal processes sped up so that we don’t have issues with missed deadlines. Had all this been in place, it’s extremely likely that the Solingen attacker would have been
returned to Bulgaria years ago. If you want my personal take on this, I think this looks more like panic
than rational decision-making. This is an issue on which governments
seem to have been reacting to events and not thinking about the future. This seems to have been the norm
since nine years ago, when the reaction was: “All these people fleeing for their lives, and nobody is helping them!
We have to let them in!” And we did... but then we left it at that. Now the reaction is: “These people are still coming in!
Some of them are violent! Voters are now voting for anti-immigration parties! We have to send them all back!” There was no thought to any
possible consequences back then, and there still isn’t now. I’m not sure this is the best way
to deal with the situation, to be honest; it’s certainly not the most effective. Here are a few things I think
do need to be urgently addressed. First: many refugees from war zones
are likely going to be traumatized; and post-traumatic stess disorder
is a serious problem that can manifest itself quite violently. These cases need to be identified and given the treatment that they need. Second: young people in this situation
are easy prey for hate preachers, who can radicalize them and maniupulate them
into committing violent acts. Now, I know that the government is making
efforts to prevent that from happening; but clearly, a lot more effort is needed. Third: if you are going to accept
hundreds of thousands of people into the country during a housing crisis, actually do something about the housing crisis. If you don’t, you’re going to
end up with a lot of frustrated citizens who, sooner or later, are going to blame
immigration for the housing crisis. This is just the start, of course: there are many other problems
that we really need to deal with. But it seems that at the moment
we’re not doing anything at all until we’re faced with something
we simply can’t ignore. And as a result of that, we are simply veering between
humanitarian crises and political crises. Now, I know that a lot of you are going to disagree
with many of the things I’ve said in this video. But I think we can all agree on one thing: veering between humanitarian crises and
political crises is no way to run a country. Now, I don’t normally beg for subscribers; but if you’re not subscribed and you’ve
made it this far into the video, please do consider it. It would be
much appreciated: thank you.