Germany imposes border controls | Piotr Kaczyński & Jowanka Jakubek-Lalik

[Music] good evening and welcome to World talks on TVP world I'm your host Diana skaya Germany is tightening its borders and causing quite the upro across the European union now this following a recent knife attack by an asylum Seeker and electoral gains made by the farri party now the German Ministry of interior is going to reintroduce controls on all land borders for 6 months beginning this upcoming Monday September 16th but is it legal and how is this going to affect the entire region now join me joining me in studio to break it all down for us are P kachinsky EU expert at the gmic foundation and yovanka yakubek laik associate professor at the University of waro thank than you both for being here with us today at TVP world uh TVP World talks good to good to be back my pleasure so let's start with the most uh I mean this crucial question of Germany really uh reintroducing these border uh checks with Poland which are slated to remain in Force at least until uh until uh December and they're saying that it's to curb illegal uh migration but how is this actually aligning with the principles of the shenen that is a challenge because actually from the from the legal perspective uh every member State part of the shenen treaty is allowed to reintroduce the Border controls however only in very exceptional cases and only with a very strong justification so European commission is entitled to actually look at this the justification and to consider to what extent the measures introduced by the member state are proportional because the pro principles proportionality is very important here uh however from the legal point of view again uh European commission cannot really veto the decision of a member State because the decision of a member state is made as a prerogative of of the state P I think you had something to say I saw a headshake there it has never happened and the commission is going to say no to a member State uh asking for a in a situation like this very critical very sensitive um to take a measure like this of course it has to be proportionate and and Justified so Germany is probably going to do this properly but the problem here is that we got first the message that it's going to be reintroduced and only afterwards justifications are coming in contacts with neighbors contacts between border control gu guards and Etc so this this this should be done from bottom up not top down and it was done to C down so then let me ask you this the the biggest the most important question here why is this happening so both of you as experts why is it why is it happening well first reason is the recent elections which were happening in Germany and the very good result of the alternative Dand uh so the far right party who was actually campaigning on the issues of migration and also the let's say unsuccessful measure me of the German government to deport the illegal immigrants who are coming to Germany however again it is very important to be aware of the fact that these people who were supposed to be deported they were not deported because of the failure of the internal procedures within Germany and those were not the people who were coming from uh other member states uh and um recently um trying to to stay in Germany it was it was uh previously happening so again this issue this measure is not really addressing the problem it is only uh trying to downplay the internal problems of the German government okay but what can you tell me about I mean the German government is of course saying that a big part of it is uh the Islamic extremism that's going on right the the the terror attacks also that uh that take place particularly the latest uh the knife attack that uh that happened right a way to secure their borders if if they must say look the problem of migration is a big question here and there was an incident terrible uh incident in in in August which provoked uh this measure to to be taken by the government but the real issue here is elections so it's not so crystal clear that there was an attack in August so afd won no afd has won ining and Saxony uh because of many issues out there and migration is one of the reasons uh but the incident is just one incident out there so what has to happen there need to be a change of some kind of policy uh when we talk about what's going on inside Germany and this is for the German government to to discuss this within its its ranks within opposition ahead of Elections next year uh but crucially right now uh there is this super important election local elections in Brandenburg uh where social Democrats of Chancellor uh Schultz have been ruling for the last term and uh actually terms multiple terms and and now they are also witnessing that they can lose the power afd is ahead of SD uh in Brandenburg and this is what's going to happen so 22nd of September uh important date for Olaf Schultz and maybe some temperatures is going to be a bit uh going down after 22nd September also in Berlin um because we have this fight in the EU uh because the communication was not there but also the real challenge is actually to protect the external borders of the European Union not the internal borders between the member states so the uh actions of German government is not really addressing the Cor of the problem uh so here again the Polish government is advocating for securing the external borders and also is seeking uh the assistance of German government in advocating the policies on the EU level so here I think again it is very important to address the roots of the problem and trying to get other EU member states to act together uh to form a joint action to address the issue of securing the external borders and especially in terms of the Russian and belarussian activities you just brought up uh this uh this topic I'm going to ask you next so how do you think that Berlin's specifically to uh to you that that Berlin's toughening of migration rules risk deteriorating polish German relations well again polish German relations have been uh repaired in the last months since the new government has taken power however uh of course there are some different interests of the Polish government and the German government and these are very normal situations so the um the thing is to actually discuss those issues and to try to find a common solution that would be addressing the concerns of both governments and not to impose unilateral measures uh that are actually um aimed at the interest of the other member states of the European Union so again here I believe that the best way forward would be to discuss those challenges those problems on the EU level uh also involving the European commission not by imposing the UN unilateral actions from the side of the German government P maybe you can give us a little bit more of a a deeper context particularly how all of this could affect broader EU cooperation on security uh and migration it's an it's a huge issue it's going to stay with us for many years uh to come for the moment we in September there's no European commission I mean formally there is a European commission but politically and this is a very sensitive political issue here uh we do not have yet new commissioner who's going to propose anything what we got we got a very important new law that is going to come to effect in 2026 uh about migration but Polish Polish prime minister said that this there's a problem with this uh with this with this law and for for example it's not uh uh it's not going to be effective on the Polish belarian border for example uh so there should be new measures new uh new issues coming up but uh this is where exactly we where we are uh we have a huge problem it's going to stay us for many years um and uh there's another problem here demography uh we need the uh we need people inside Germany inside Poland who are going to be working uh because this week we were seeing for example Dro uh dragy report uh which says that until 2040 uh European Union is going to lose 2 million people who are working a year uh so every year we are losing 2 million workers so we need new people who can work in uh in the European economy and that is also for Germany so uh there are bigger big bigger isues here at stake and if we just go back to um Poland of course being I mean you brought up the the migration of course the issue with with the with the with Belarus as well now especially increasing migration crisis on on that border with bellarus can you explain Poland's specific proposals or any you on how they might impact also uh further relations with uh with the EU I mean Poland Germany is one thing but I mean Poland is also like you mentioned having this this this issue uh with Belarus and we don't know is it is it also going to last uh this this long if uh if Poland was to propose anything the the Pol polish most important issue is the external border this is what uh what the professor was saying before uh and this is the big issue for for Tusk and for the Polish government uh external borders Point number one second second issue Tusk here is basically protecting European laws uh him uh the Greek Prime Minister is also asking for respecting European laws respect shenen uh and shenen rules uh so taking step back Schultz will is going to respect it but the first instinct was uh quite nationalistic and M Victor Auburn was saying oh welcome to the club uh so exactly this is what what's going on if you have a politician who are nationalistic politicians the replies to the migration questions cannot be nationalistic they have to be European and those and this is where they if you have for example there are also elections in Austria by the way uh if you have nationalistic um governments out there who uh who are saying oh uh and this is what's coming from the ha this week as well if Germany's closing borders maybe we can close our borders as well just like that because we can and that's the problem so the bottom line here is that uh invoking uh this kind of Border controls could actually be contradictory to the European principles to the principles that especially the shenen treaty has uh brought up to the to the European integration so here um Germany is not kind of acting in a way that would secure those principles but uh only acting in a way way to protect their own interest and trying to gain in internal policies so of course from the political perspective it's perfectly understandable however there are much bigger uh Stakes here uh so again very important aspect is to really coordinate the activities and also to communic communicate between the the countries to find the proper solution to the problem uh would you be able to to name uh for example one solution that you would see uh would be able to to solve this issue and like you said it's a very uh it's going to be a big problem and to potentially uh uh shift EU policies and just very briefly because we're almost out of sure but there there are issues like this for example the issue of having comps CS difficult Point here but comps for people who are trying to get ayum in in the EU but outside of the EU borders uh this is a proposal coming from Rome uh from Mone couple a couple months ago and uh from the lion say that's not going to be easy but maybe we can look at this uh so uh maybe we'll have those refugee camps outside of the EU borders a bit like UK tried with Rwanda or EU or Italy was trying to to get something like this bilary with Tunisia also to change the focus from the internal borders to the external borders borders of the EU need to be protected by all the member state it has to be a joint effort otherwise we will fail very interesting to see how this is going to play out in the next six months uh to remind our viewers uh this new law will going to affect uh Monday uh the 16th of September with border controls in Germany p kachinski and Yan kayaku thank you so much for being with us this evening thank you thank you and that's all for this edition of world talks on TVP world news I'm Diana SK have a good night