German authorities have reportedly cited the increased arrival of passengers without a Schengen visa as the reason behind stepped up passport and border controls, as of Nov. 12, on flights arriving at German airports from Greece.
According to Deutsche Welle, which quoted the German interior ministry, sample checks between January and October 2017 on passengers arriving on flights from Greece revealed roughly 1,000 instances of people without proper travel documents (i.e. irregular migrants), something the German side said was much higher than the average number of illegal entries from other Schengen member-states to Germany.
“We’re dealing with flights from Greece as if they were coming from Turkey or Egypt,” was the quote included by DW and attributed to German federal police.
An EU Commission official on Tuesday said a three-party meeting between EU experts along with representatives from Greece and Germany will examine the reason why German authorities are bypassing Schengen procedures for passengers arriving at German airports from Greek destinations.
Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said Germany is one of a handful of EU countries that has temporarily restored checks on intra-Schengen arrivals, and specifically on flights arriving from Greece.
She said the development aims to deal with a risk of irregular migration.
Bertaud merely added that Berlin has offered assurances that the stricter measures are “targeted and limited”, in order to ensure public policy and internal security.
The strict border checks, including having passengers transported by bus to a separate terminal for passport control, have generated sharp criticism in Greece.
The development comes after a migrant-refugee crisis erupted in the eastern Aegean in 2015, as up to a million people identified as Mideast war refugees were ferried over from Turkey’s western coast to a handful of Greek isles by migrant smugglers. Third world nationals from other countries, ranging from Morocco to Bangladesh to sub-Sahara Africa, also took advantage of the flow to enter Greece, as part of a bid to continue on to preferred destinations in central and northern Europe by various European crossing borders without checks.
