Germany extends legally questionable border controls until March 2027

Germany’s CDU/CSU-SPD government has announced it will extend additional controls at all nine of its land borders until early 2027, despite questions of legality.

Dobrindt extends border checks

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) has announced that the federal republic will extend additional controls at its nine land borders until March 2027.

The German government first introduced additional border controls in the Schengen Area in September 2024, and the policy has now been extended four times. The latest extension was due to expire in September. 

The Federal Interior Ministry said it has notified the European Commission of the latest extension. EU member states in the Schengen Area may implement their own border controls, but only when public order or internal security is under threat.

As such, external concern has grown that the German government’s additional controls breach EU Schengen laws. In early May, a Koblenz court ruled that additional checks conducted on the Germany-Luxembourg border between March and September 2025 could not be justified on the basis of a threat to public order or internal security.

A law professor, Dominik Brodowski, brought the case forward after driving from Luxembourg to Germany in June 2025. Border police verified Brodowski’s identity at the border before he entered Germany. 

"This should really give politicians food for thought and not be dismissed as a one-off decision,” the professor at Saarland University told the dpa following the ruling, which he called a "strong signal for European integration, for European unification and also for Schengen law."

EU has already called on Germany to end additional checks

Dobrindt’s decision comes despite the EU itself recently calling on German authorities to suspend all additional border checks.

In July, Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner (Austrian ÖVP) told the dpa that falling migration figures and new EU asylum rules meant Germany should begin phasing out the extra checks.

According to the EU border control agency, Frontex, “irregular” migration fell by around one-third in the first half of 2026. The asylum rule Brunner refers to is the New Pact on Migration and Asylum (or GEAS in German), which took full effect on June 12.

The GEAS makes it easier for EU member states to deny people the right to apply for asylum. Human Rights Watch says the reform will “take a sledgehammer” to asylum rights “at a time when the world needs Europe more than ever to champion human rights”. 

Former President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz (SPD) supported Brunner’s appeal, saying the additional controls “brought nothing” and broke basic European laws.