FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany—Earlier than 25-year-old Abhishek Budhiraja leaves his dorm to go to campus, he pats down his pockets. “Cellphone, keys, pockets, headphones,” he says, working via his guidelines. Not too long ago, that listing has grown longer: “Pupil ID, passport, residence allow.”
At the moment, like most different days, Budhiraja anticipates needing to show his id.
On the far facet of a blue metropolis bridge that connects Germany’s japanese border metropolis of Frankfurt an der Oder to its twin metropolis, Slubice, Poland, a gaggle of border brokers and law enforcement officials block the sidewalk. They put on bulletproof vests affixed with walkie-talkies, and hawkishly scan automobiles and pedestrians as they cross. A stream of morning commuters on foot stroll by them with out slowing their gait.
Budhiraja, who got here to Germany in January 2024 on a pupil visa from India, is just not amongst them. As he approaches Slubice, steps away from his college campus, 5 brokers knowingly take a look at each other. A guard in army gear steps ahead, voicing a rote command Budhiraja has lengthy memorized.
Abhishek Budhiraja, a world pupil from India, rides the bus on his each day commute from his dorm in Frankfurt to his college’s department campus in Slubice, Poland, on Oct. 7.
“It’s at all times like this. I’m getting stopped on daily basis,” Budhiraja stated afterward. Typically, he’s stopped once more on his reentry to Germany. “They simply ask for my paperwork, after which they let me” cross.
Though Budhiraja’s college, Europa-Universität Viadrina, has buildings on either side of the German-Polish border, it’s a single entity—nearly just like the cities themselves. However that interdependence has turn into strained as rising anti-migration sentiment results in tightened inner borders throughout the continent.
The Stadtbrücke bridge connecting the so-called twin cities was as soon as the image of unity and free motion between Germany and Poland. Now, its symbolism is altering, as nations are reimposing inner borders on the danger of European unity. Over the summer time, the bridge’s royal blue EU flags have been changed by purple and white Polish ones.
An previous movie show register Slubice, previously japanese Germany, reads “No Previous’” from its as soon as “Kino Piast” on Oct. 7. It was named after the primary Polish royal dynasty, the Piasts, throughout a complete Polonization marketing campaign carried out post-1945 after Poland acquired new territories from Germany.
The Schengen Settlement has lengthy been seen as a defining achievement of the European Union. In 1985, it created a border-free area that’s grown to include 29 nations between which individuals might journey, with no visa necessities or border controls.
The connection between Frankfurt an der Oder in Germany and Slubice in Poland demonstrated Schengen’s potential. Unpoliced journey between the nations has been potential for the reason that finish of 2007, when Poland joined the Schengen Space. In line with Sören Bollmann, the chief of the Frankfurt-Slubice Cooperation Middle, meaning as many as 20,000 individuals cross the bridge between the 2 cities every day, to work, attend college, ship their children to daycare, and grocery store,
However the two cities have now turn into a logo of the Schengen zone’s limits. For so long as the Schengen Agreement has been in place, nations have had the right to reintroduce border controls for nationwide safety. These controls are nominally restricted to a interval of six months, with a most restrict of two years. Previous to 2015, momentary border controls had only been reinstated 35 occasions by member states within the span of almost a decade. These cases had been largely one-off sporting occasions, or presidential visits.
Then got here the European migration disaster. In the summertime of 2015, greater than 1 million individuals fleeing conflict and instability within the Center East sought asylum in Europe. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel opened up Germany to the biggest share, most of them Syrian.
The identical yr, Germany was the primary nation to re-patrol its borders to stem a “massive inflow of individuals in search of worldwide safety,” as official EU communications put it, particularly at Austrian land borders. Ten years later, partial controls on the Bavarian border with Austria are nonetheless in place—and spreading. In 2024, the federal minister of the inside on the time, Nancy Faeser, ratcheted up controls to incorporate all of Germany’s land borders in a said effort to “scale back irregular migration additional, cease migrant smugglers and criminals, and detect Islamists earlier than they’ll do any hurt.”
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Demonstrators wave German flags with the writing WE ARE THE PEOPLE as people protest against the rising cost of living in a demonstration organized by the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party on October 8, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. Demonstrators wave German flags with the writing WE ARE THE PEOPLE as individuals protest in opposition to the rising price of residing in an indication organized by the right-wing Different for Germany (AfD) political social gathering on October 8, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. The Far Right Is Winning Europe’s Immigration Debate
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Within the identify of preventing unlawful immigration, the EU, the USA, and Australia are emboldening authoritarian regimes, fueling abuses and corruption, and stoking intolerance at residence.
In line with migration coverage specialists, Germany has created a precedent for permissibly breaking EU legislation by sustaining its border controls nicely previous the regulation’s limits. “When Germany, because the strongest and richest nation within the European Union, is brazenly disregarding the laws, this can be a clear sign to others that ‘OK, we are able to do the identical,’ as a result of Germany won’t cease us,” stated Norbert Cyrus, a social anthropologist specializing in irregular migration on the Viadrina. “Then, you may have this domino impact.”
Certainly, Austria, Slovenia, France, Sweden, and Norway adopted Germany’s lead in 2015, introducing new border inspections that in nearly all instances stay in impact. Ten years later, European nations proceed to develop and extend their border checks. As of October 2025, the European Fee has recorded 481 notifications of momentary reintroductions, together with a big share from COVID-19. At the moment, nations together with Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Denmark have additionally applied inner border controls.
Two years in the past, Germany launched partial border checks at Frankfurt an der Oder for automobiles and foot visitors coming from Poland as a part of a nationwide crackdown on migration. In July, Poland adopted go well with and reinstated its personal partial controls at border crossings with Lithuania and Germany.
Many residents in Frankfurt an der Oder fear that these momentary controls will quietly turn into everlasting. “The danger is that [we] get used to it,” stated Bollmann, who has lived within the metropolis for 25 years. “A lot of persons are beginning to suppose that it’s regular.”
German police patrol pedestrians coming into Frankfurt an der Oder from Poland on Oct. 7.
There are different residents, nonetheless, who welcome inner border controls as the brand new regular. On the bridge within the no-man’s-land between Germany and Poland, footage of Frankfurt an der Oder mayoral candidate Wilko Möller had been in all places in late September. In marketing campaign posters held on beams throughout the bridge, the grey-haired politician was pointing on the digicam beneath a message studying, “For Germany, due to you.” In one other, he stood along with his fingers clasped, wanting straight forward, beneath the message, “Security belongs in skilled fingers.”
Möller was a candidate with the far-right Different for Germany (AfD), which has gained a big foothold within the nation over the past decade. Immigration has turn into a core mobilizing theme of the AfD, whose social gathering leaders seized on a handful of violent assaults perpetrated by asylum seekers in Germany in 2024 and early 2025—plus an inflow of Ukrainians in Germany—to marketing campaign on the necessity for a safer nation with more durable controls.
Over the last federal elections in February, the AfD garnered 20 % of the vote and have become Germany’s second-strongest political power. In Frankfurt an der Oder, Möller additionally got here in second place in its mayoral election earlier this month. However though his marketing campaign failed, the constituency it represents stays influential.
Earlier than Poland reinstated its border patrol brokers, vigilante teams of Polish nationalists gathered in Slubice for months this summer time. They tried citizen arrests of individuals they deemed suspicious, and unfold false claims that Germany was sending hundreds of unlawful migrants to Poland, locals stated.
The truth is, between Could and July 2025, the German Federal Police turned away near 12,500 individuals at border crossings nationwide. The bulk (76 %) had been rejected on the border “in reference to unlawful border crossing.” Cyrus stated that determine consists of EU residents who might have been turned again on the border for an harmless purpose, like forgetting their passport.
Polish border patrol brokers examine an incoming van on the Slubice border crossing on Oct. 7.
How a lot do border checks affect residents’ lives? As a sensible matter, they’re largely inconvenient. Residents lament that they have to now keep in mind to convey their passports throughout the bridge and afford themselves additional time commuting. However the brand new measures have a deeper significance as nicely.
Slubice’s deputy mayor, Tomasz Stefanski, instructed International Coverage that the controls “don’t have sense.” They battle with sentiments on the bottom. “They will’t think about in Warsaw or Berlin … that we’re one metropolis, with two components,” he stated. And neither of these components had an issue with migrants passing via the border: “They don’t know the true scenario right here,” he added.
The truth is, many residents see border controls as proof of their diminished rights as Europeans. “For me, it’s loopy as a result of I grew up with out borders,” stated Ira Helten, a pupil member of the presidential council on the Viadrina. The backslide to common border checks is hardest to swallow for residents who lived via the transition to a border-free Germany.
“It hurts extra, as a result of we all know what we’re giving up,” Bollmann stated. “Frankfurt-Slubice with out the European integration undertaking could be a really unhappy place.”
Sarcastically, the individuals most burdened by inconsistent border checks even have the best tolerance for them, Helten stated. A big portion of the college’s non-European worldwide college students are from nations accustomed to border controls.
“Border controls should not a difficulty,” Budhiraja stated with a continual smile. He simply needs they had been evenly utilized to everybody. “However if you find yourself in a rush and abruptly somebody stops you and asks on your paperwork, and 10 others cross in entrance of you, it’s like: What did I do? I’m simply strolling.”
