Within hours of the Ceuta breach, Friedrich Merz, parliamentary leader of Germany’s opposition CDU/CSU bloc, called a press conference in Berlin demanding that the Scholz government “seal Germany’s borders to secondary movements” and expand stationary checks on trains and motorways from France. The party, which trails the far-right AfD by up to seven points in polls ahead of September’s eastern-state elections, is determined to pre-empt right-wing attacks on migration. Merz argued that the sudden influx—though it ultimately subsided—proved the EU’s new Pact on Asylum and Migration is “stillborn” and that national measures are required. He urged the government to apply Article 25a of the Schengen Borders Code to re-introduce controls with France and Belgium and to suspend Germany’s 24-hour airport transit visa exemption for Moroccan nationals. The Interior Ministry rejected the demands, noting that Germany already maintains targeted checks with Poland, Czechia and Switzerland and saying there is “no evidence of secondary flows” from Ceuta so far. Business groups such as DIHK warned that widening land-border checks would delay just-in-time supply chains that criss-cross the Rhine valley and hamper meetings for French and Belgian executives who commute weekly to German plants. For global-mobility teams, the political pressure means border regimes could tighten quickly if migrant numbers rise again. HR departments should map which cross-border commuter groups—engineers based in Strasbourg, sales teams flying in via Paris—would be affected by any new controls and prepare mitigation strategies such as electronic proof of assignment letters to speed profiling checks. Although immediate changes are unlikely, the narrative shift shows that German migration and mobility policy remains politically volatile; corporations should keep contingency playbooks ready through the autumn election season.
Source: Le Monde
