Border controls in Görlitz: Fertilizer tourists are concerned about waiting times!

Border controls in Görlitz: Fertilizer tourists are concerned about waiting times!

Görlitz, Deutschland - in Görlitz the mood is tense, and not just because of the heat. On the first July, the temperatures in the city on the border river and at the petrol stations, where drivers from Germany often venture to Poland to get fuel prices that are below German prices. However, the impending border controls could complicate these trips and change the popular tank tours of the Germans to the neighboring country. Saxon is mixed.

Anita neither, a new görlitzer, remains optimistic: she does not believe that her trips to Zgorzelec will be extended by the controls in time. "Poland is certainly interested in smooth border traffic," she says. Ulrich Kaiser, a businessman from Munich, on the other hand, sees it more skeptical: he finds the controls annoying and particularly thinks about the truck drivers who are often extremely under time pressure.

concern for long waiting times

Another Görlitzer, Wolfgang Hantusch, has long taken refueling in Poland for granted, but now begins to think about alternatives. "If I have to fear longer waiting times, I think about whether I might not dodge through the Czech Republic," he says. These concerns are no coincidence, because the border controls have been extended again and again since their introduction in October 2023 and should now remain until December 2024, such as nd current reported.

The basis of this measure lies in combating smuggling crime, which means that around 920 people have been arrested since the beginning of the controls. However, many of these arrests do not affect professional smugglers, but often family members or local citizens, which makes the situation even more complex. After all, migration research shows that the groups, which are viewed as smugglers, are often loose and spontaneously formed structures.

social effects of the controls

The federal police carry out a form of "veil search" during the controls, in which only a randomly selected group of entry -in -the -art people is checked. Critics such as the left-wing member of the Bundestag Clara Bünger accuse the police to apply racist criteria. The situation for many refugees becomes even more dramatic: they have to accept unsafe routes to avoid the controls, which leads to an increase in risky crossings. An investigation showed that in the first half of 2022 alone on border 46 "pushbacks" - that is, the rejection of irregularly traveled - were documented.

The unique challenges with which Görlitz and Zgorzelec are confronted keep the discussion about security and human rights alive. Despite the increasing controls, the European city of Görlitz-Zgorzelec remains a melting pot of cultures, but under increasingly difficult conditions for many people who want to cross the border.