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, operating by his guidelines. Not too long ago, that listing has grown longer: “Pupil ID, passport, residence allow.”
At this time, like most different days, Budhiraja anticipates needing to show his id.
On the far aspect of a blue metropolis bridge that connects Germany’s jap 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 vehicles and pedestrians as they go. 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 scholar visa from India, is just not amongst them. As he approaches Slubice, steps away from his college campus, 5 brokers knowingly have a look at each other. A guard in army gear steps ahead, voicing a rote command Budhiraja has lengthy memorized.
Abhishek Budhiraja, a global scholar from India, rides the bus on his every 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 mentioned afterward. Typically, he’s stopped once more on his reentry to Germany. “They only ask for my paperwork, after which they let me” go.
Though Budhiraja’s college, Europa-Universität Viadrina, has buildings on each side of the German-Polish border, it’s a single entity—nearly just like the cities themselves. However that interdependence has develop into strained as rising anti-migration sentiment results in tightened inside 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 international locations are reimposing inside borders on the danger of European unity. Over the summer time, the bridge’s royal blue EU flags have been changed by crimson and white Polish ones.
An previous movie show register Slubice, previously jap 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 international locations between which individuals may 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 international locations has been doable because the finish of 2007, when Poland joined the Schengen Space. In keeping with Sören Bollmann, the chief of the Frankfurt-Slubice Cooperation Heart, meaning as many as 20,000 individuals cross the bridge between the 2 cities every day, to work, attend college, ship their youngsters to daycare, and grocery store,
However the two cities have now develop into an emblem 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, non permanent border controls had only been reinstated 35 instances by member states within the span of almost a decade. These cases have 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 warfare and instability within the Center East sought asylum in Europe. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel opened up Germany to the most important share, most of them Syrian.
The identical 12 months, Germany was the primary nation to re-patrol its borders to stem a “huge inflow of individuals looking for 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 “cut back irregular migration additional, cease migrant smugglers and criminals, and detect Islamists earlier than they will 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 value of dwelling in an indication organized by the right-wing Various for Germany (AfD) political get together on October 8, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. The Far Right Is Winning Europe’s Immigration Debate
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Within the title of preventing unlawful immigration, the EU, the US, and Australia are emboldening authoritarian regimes, fueling abuses and corruption, and stoking intolerance at house.
In keeping with migration coverage consultants, Germany has created a precedent for permissibly breaking EU regulation by sustaining its border controls properly previous the regulation’s limits. “When Germany, because the strongest and richest nation within the European Union, is overtly disregarding the laws, it is a clear sign to others that ‘OK, we will do the identical,’ as a result of Germany won’t cease us,” mentioned Norbert Cyrus, a social anthropologist specializing in irregular migration on the Viadrina. “Then, you could 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 international locations proceed to increase and extend their border checks. As of October 2025, the European Fee has recorded 481 notifications of non permanent reintroductions, together with a big share from COVID-19. Presently, international locations together with Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Denmark have additionally applied inside border controls.
Two years in the past, Germany launched partial border checks at Frankfurt an der Oder for vehicles 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 non permanent controls will quietly develop into everlasting. “The danger is that [we] get used to it,” mentioned Bollmann, who has lived within the metropolis for 25 years. “A lot of individuals are beginning to suppose that it’s regular.”
German police patrol pedestrians getting into Frankfurt an der Oder from Poland on Oct. 7.
There are different residents, nevertheless, who welcome inside 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 have 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 digital camera beneath a message studying, “For Germany, due to you.” In one other, he stood together with his fingers clasped, wanting straight forward, beneath the message, “Security belongs in skilled fingers.”
Möller was a candidate with the far-right Various for Germany (AfD), which has gained a big foothold within the nation over the past decade. Immigration has develop into a core mobilizing theme of the AfD, whose get together 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 p.c of the vote and have become Germany’s second-strongest political pressure. 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 mentioned.
The truth is, between Might and July 2025, the German Federal Police turned away near 12,500 individuals at border crossings nationwide. The bulk (76 p.c) have been rejected on the border “in reference to unlawful border crossing.” Cyrus mentioned that determine consists of EU residents who may 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 carry their passports throughout the bridge and afford themselves additional time commuting. However the brand new measures have a deeper significance as properly.
Slubice’s deputy mayor, Tomasz Stefanski, advised Overseas 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 elements,” he mentioned. And neither of these elements had an issue with migrants passing by the border: “They don’t know the true state of affairs 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,” mentioned Ira Helten, a scholar member of the presidential council on the Viadrina. The backslide to common border checks is hardest to swallow for residents who lived by the transition to a border-free Germany.
“It hurts extra, as a result of we all know what we’re giving up,” Bollmann mentioned. “Frankfurt-Slubice with out the European integration challenge could be a really unhappy place.”
Satirically, the individuals most burdened by inconsistent border checks even have the best tolerance for them, Helten mentioned. A big portion of the college’s non-European worldwide college students are from international locations accustomed to border controls.
“Border controls will not be a difficulty,” Budhiraja mentioned with a continual smile. He simply needs they have been evenly utilized to everybody. “However when you find yourself in a rush and abruptly somebody stops you and asks on your paperwork, and 10 others go in entrance of you, it’s like: What did I do? I’m simply strolling.”
