BERLIN, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- German Interior Minister and Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Horst Seehofer has defended the recent creation of a controversial regional border police unit in his home state of Bavaria on Monday.
Speaking in the town of Freilassing on the German-Austrian border, Seehofer said that the purpose of the unit was to "restore law and order" by preventing illegal immigration within the European Union (EU). Seehofer was joined in the public appearance by Bavarian governor Markus Soeder (CSU) and state interior minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU).
The interior minister also took the opportunity to announce that he was close to reaching an agreement with Italy for Rome to take back asylum seekers which were previously already registered there.
"We are already very well advanced (in talks with Italy). There will be an agreement," Seehofer said. The prospective deal would mirror concessions made earlier by Greece and Madrid to help prevent so-called "secondary migration" of asylum seekers within the EU Schengen free travel area.
Authorities in Germany are generally only able to refuse entry to foreign citizens without documents at the border if they did not plan to file an application for humanitarian residence in the country itself. Under the latest bilateral regulations, this circumstance will no longer apply to non-EU nationals who attempt to enter Germany illicitly after first setting foot in Spain or Greece. Even individuals who indicate that they want to obtain asylum upon arrival will be detained and returned to their first entry point into the EU within 48 hours.
For Seehofer, the recent deals with Madrid and Greece marked important first steps towards the restoration of rules under the Dublin regime governing which EU state is responsible for asylum seekers arriving in the bloc. Back in 2015 at the height of the "refugee crisis", the temporary suspension of the regime enabled hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to travel from Hungary to Germany via Austria.
However, neither Seehofer nor any of the other senior CSU politicians in attendance on Monday were able to present concrete evidence to support claims that the Bavarian border police was already contribution to the maintenance of a new order of "intelligent border controls" envisioned by the interior minister. According to a report by the public broadcaster "Bayerischer Rundfunk", the unit in question has so far only encountered four cases of illegal immigration since mid-July.
Faced with resulting criticism of relying on symbolic politics to pander to right-wing voters, Seehofer was unwilling to confirm the figure cited by "Bayerischer Rundfunk". Instead, he highlighted that 3000 illegal immigrants were turned back by federal police at the Bavarian-Austrian border during the first of 2018.
Under an agreement struck between Bavaria and Berlin, the state's border police can only conduct inspections with the explicit approval of the federal government. As a consequence, the project has been described by some as an attempt by the Bavarian government to bolster the superficial appearance of its state-level control over asylum policy ahead of looming regional elections.
The re-activation of the previously defunct police unit in July was also accompanied by the opening of a regional asylum agency in Bavaria. Officially established to speed up deportations from the state, the agency will also only be able to perform auxiliary functions as the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) remains responsible for the conduct of asylum application procedures under the German law.
