BRUSSELS — In the 10 years since the Brussels terror attacks, the EU has tightened its security strategy but the internet is opening up new threats, according to the bloc’s counterterrorism coordinator.  Daesh is “mutating jihadism,” Bartjan Wegter told POLITICO in an interview on the eve of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Brussels, which pushed the bloc to bolster border protection and step up collaboration and information-sharing. The group has “calculated that it’s much more effective to radicalize people who are already inside the EU through online environments rather than to organize orchestrated attacks from outside our borders,” he said.  “And they’re very good at it.” Ten years ago, two terrorists from Daesh (also known as the so-called Islamic State) blew themselves up at Brussels Airport. Another explosion tore through a metro car at Maelbeek station, in the heart of Brussels’ EU district. Thirty-two people were killed, and hundreds more injured.  The attacks came just months after terrorists killed 130 people in attacks on a concert hall, a stadium, restaurants and bars in Paris, exposing gaps in information-sharing in the bloc’s free-travel area. The terrorists had moved between countries, planning the attacks in one and carrying them out in another, said Wegter, who is Dutch. “That’s where our vulnerabilities were.” Today, violent jihadism remains a threat and new large-scale attacks can’t be excluded. But the probability is “much, much lower today than it was 10 years ago,” said Wegter. In the aftermath of the attacks, the bloc changed its security strategy with a focus on prevention and a “security reflex” across every policy field, according to Wegter. It’s also stepping up police and judicial collaboration through Europol and Eurojust, and it’s putting in place databases — including the Schengen Information System — so countries could alert each other about high-risk individuals, as well as an entry/exit system to monitor who enters and leaves the free-travel area. But the bloc is facing a new type of threat, as security officials see a gradual increase in attempted terrorist attacks by lone actors. A lot of that is being cultivated online and increasingly, younger people are involved. “We’ve seen cases of children 12 years old. And, the radicalization process [is] also happening faster,” Wegter said. “Sometimes we’re talking about weeks or months.” In 2024, a third of all arrests connected to potential terror threats were of people aged between 12 and 20 years old, and France recorded a tripling of the number of minors radicalized between 2023 and 2024, said Wegter.  “Just put yourself in the shoes of law enforcement … You’re dealing with young people who spend most of their time online … Who may not have a criminal record. Who, if they are plotting attacks, may not be using registered weapons. It’s very hard to prevent.” Violent jihadism is just one of the threats EU security officials worry are being cultivated online. Wegter said there is also an emerging trend of a violent right-wing extremist narrative online — and to a lesser extent, violent left-wing extremism. There’s also what he called “nihilistic extremist violence,” a new phenomenon that can feature elements of different ideologies or a drive to overthrow the system, but which is fundamentally minors seeking an identity through violence. “What we see online, some of these images are so horrible that even law enforcement needs psychological support to see this kind of stuff,” said Wegter. Law enforcement’s ability to get access to encrypted data and information on people under investigation is crucial, he stressed, and he drew parallels with the steps the EU took to secure the Schengen free movement 10 years ago. “If you want to preserve the good things of the internet, we also need to make sure that we have … some key mechanisms to safeguard the internet also.”

Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Poland’s Donald Tusk are among a group of EU leaders urging Brussels to tighten visa rules for Russian nationals with combat experience in Ukraine. In a letter to European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, eight leaders warned that Moscow’s war on Ukraine is creating longer-term internal security risks for the EU’s Schengen free-movement area. They argue that demobilized or rotating combatants, including thousands recruited from prisons, could seek to travel to EU countries, potentially fueling organized crime, violent offences or hostile state activity. They say rising numbers of visas issued to Russian nationals add urgency to the issue. Russian nationals filed some 620,000 to 670,000 Schengen visa applications in 2025, according to travel-industry estimates, ranking among the top five nationalities seeking entry to the EU. Roughly four in five applicants received a visa. “Any entry may therefore have serious consequences for the security of a Member State or the entire Schengen area,” the letter states. The initiative, also backed by Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Sweden, calls on the Commission to prepare targeted visa restrictions and explore changes to EU rules enabling coordinated entry bans. EU countries have already tightened access in recent years, with most visas now issued for shorter stays and more limited validity.

The European Commission is embarking on a joint exercise with member states to evaluate Germany’s application of Schengen border rules and safeguards, with the review expected to begin in March, according to two sources familiar with the process. The evaluation follows a POLITICO investigation that found Germany had marked Ukrainian citizens who had served time in prisons under Russian control as security threats and prevented them from entering the European Union. The Schengen evaluation will draw new scrutiny of Berlin’s assertive control of border crossings into and around Europe. Germany has imposed temporary, randomized police checks along its own national borders, and is now using technology to play an outsized role in shaping how other countries police Europe’s external frontier as well.  Germany’s tough posture toward border enforcement is driven as much by domestic politics as by security concerns: Friedrich Merz’s conservative-led administration has embraced the controls and deportations to blunt the electoral appeal of the far right and to signal a break with Berlin’s traditionally welcoming stance toward asylees. In March, Merz’s government will have to decide whether to renew the temporary border checks, a policy that has been widely criticized for violating the European Union’s promise of free movement. “The Schengen area is sliced up like Swiss cheese,” said Slovenian Socialist MEP Matjaž Nemec, a member of the European Parliament’s Schengen borders scrutiny group. “As long as the Commission turns a blind eye to blatant violations of EU law and allows large countries like Germany and France to get away with them with impunity, the future of the EU looks bleak.”  Our investigation found that Germany had issued alerts for Ukrainian refugees once held in Russian-controlled penal institutions, blocking them from entering the European Union. Although Ukrainian authorities said the list of former prisoners had been shared with law-enforcement agency Europol solely for informational purposes, the names later found their way into the EU’s Schengen Information System — a database that links border-control and law-enforcement authorities across the bloc, allowing them to share real-time alerts during police checks and at external border crossings. Former detainees, rights groups and lawyers say that information-sharing coincided with a surge in entry bans — separating families and leaving former prisoners trapped by opaque security decisions they can’t meaningfully challenge. Last week the European Data Protection Board warned that Germany and other member states were failing to provide sufficient data to assess whether individuals’ rights under the Schengen Information System were being respected. “The situation of Ukrainians detained by Russia must be improved, as they are the group currently paying the highest price for safeguarding Europe’s security,” said MEP Pekka Toveri, a Finnish member of the center-right European People’s Party. “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine concretely demonstrates why such continuous assessment is essential. Managing Europe’s external borders is a core part of the credibility of the entire Schengen system, yet Russia’s brutal actions also create exceptional situations that no normal system is designed to handle.” DOBRINT’S BARRICADES In 2007, when eastern neighbors Poland and the Czech Republic became fully integrated into the Schengen zone, Germany dismantled the last of the checkpoints at which agents asked to see the passports of travelers entering the country by land. Within years, however, Germans began to have second thoughts about the move. Amid the 2015 refugee crisis, multiple Schengen countries deployed internal border controls under emergency provisions of EU law. Those allow temporary checks as a tool the European Commission describes as a “measure of last resort,” limited to exceptional circumstances and typically applied in a targeted, intelligence-led way. Germany used those exceptions most extensively, as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) built political momentum by campaigning against migration and questioning the Schengen system itself.  Mainstream parties across the political spectrum responded by repeatedly extending and broadening internal checks, framing them as necessary for the country’s security. An Interior Ministry spokesperson said the controls are required to “counter the strain on Germany’s systems caused by the overall high level of migration in recent years.” After widening those controls to additional borders in 2023, Germany moved in September 2024 to authorize temporary checks along all of its land borders. Those controls have been carried out on a rolling, largely randomized basis rather than through fixed checkpoints. In 2025 the policy hardened further under Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative-led government, which embraced the broad use of internal checks as a core element of its migration and security agenda and signaled its readiness to extend them again.  Alexander Dobrindt ordered thousands of additional federal police officers to border duties. | Thomas Banneyer/picturealliance via Getty Images Shortly after taking office in spring 2025, Merz’s government not only prolonged the temporary border controls but also announced a significant operational ramp-up: Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt ordered thousands of additional federal police officers to border duties, substantially increasing the personnel assigned to checks. In March Dobrindt will have to decide whether to extend the temporary checks along all of Germany’s land borders for another six months, under pressure from the AfD as it prepares to contest five state elections this year. Neighboring countries have chafed at Germany’s approach, which they say risks undermining one of Europe’s core achievements — the free movement of goods and services among companies. Luxembourg’s Home Affairs Minister Léon Gloden has pointed to controls along his country’s border that he says disrupt tens of thousands of daily commuters without justification. Gloden has also called on the European Commission to intervene more forcefully. In an interview with the Financial Times in December, he accused Brussels of failing to properly enforce Schengen rules by allowing Germany to maintain prolonged internal border controls without challenge. The Commission, he asserted, has failed to carry out unannounced monitoring visits to assess whether the checks are still justified. “The current border controls are necessary to enforce European legal principles and thereby safeguard the Schengen agreement in the long term,” said Günter Krings, deputy parliamentary leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag.  WHEN ONE COUNTRY’S ALERTS DECIDE FOR ALL That same impulse is felt far beyond Germany’s own land borders. Under Article 24 of the Schengen Information System regulation, any member state can flag an individual for posing a threat to public order or internal security. Other countries are bound to turn the person away at the zone’s external borders. Documents reviewed by POLITICO show that in multiple cases, Germany entered such Article 24 alerts against former Ukrainian prisoners who had served sentences in prisons under Russian control. The names appear to have reached Germany as part of a list of 3,738 former prisoners generated by Ukrainian authorities and transmitted via Europol.  The underlying security logic appears to rest on concerns that individuals who spent time in Russian-run detention facilities could have been manipulated by Russian intelligence. In a written response to POLITICO, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said it is aware of cases in which Ukrainian nationals who had been in Russian-occupied territories or transferred to Russia were approached, pressured or exploited by Russian intelligence services. The domestic intelligence services said such assessments are shared with other German authorities in formats ranging from general threat overviews to individual case evaluations, which may be taken into account in security-related decisions.  Germany’s Interior Ministry asserted in written responses to POLITICO that refusal-of-entry alerts in the Schengen Information System are issued only after case-by-case assessments where a person is deemed to pose a risk to public security or order. Authorities may take into account information shared via Europol, the ministry said while acknowledging that it does not have statistics on how often such alerts are applied to specific groups. “Heightened scrutiny in itself is legitimate,” said Czech MEP Nikola Bartůšek, who cited the hostile actions carried out by Russian intelligence services on Czech territory, including the lethal 2014 bombing of an ammunition warehouse in Vrbětice. “But what must be avoided is treating victims of war as suspects by default. Security concerns must be addressed through evidence-based assessments.” That standard does not appear to have been applied in the case of Vasyl Soldatov, a Ukrainian former prisoner forcibly transferred to Russia during the war. After his release from detention in Russian-occupied Crimea in May 2025, Soldatov sought to travel onward to the Czech Republic, where his wife was living as a war refugee. Acting on advice from a human rights organization that warned him of a possible Schengen Information System alert, he submitted a data-access request to Czech authorities while still in Crimea. While Czech police confirmed that Soldatov is not listed as an “undesirable person” under Czech law and is not considered a security risk domestically, authorities nevertheless enforced a refusal of entry because an active Schengen Information System alert — entered by Germany — obliged them to do so. Similarly, when Yuliia Hetman, a former detainee from occupied Mariupol, arrived at the Polish border in September 2023, officers found no problems with her travel documents or visas and carried out no independent security assessment. But upon entering her name in the Schengen Information System, they found an alert attached. The European Commission coordinates monitoring of how countries are applying the Schengen rules. | Omar Havana/Getty Images In each case, national authorities in the Czech Republic and Poland stressed they had no choice but to enforce a Schengen-wide alert entered by Germany. Neither Soldatov nor Hetman has challenged Germany’s action in court. Contesting a Schengen alert abroad requires time, money and stable legal representation that most former prisoners or the small NGOs that serve them simply don’t have, according to Hanna Skrypka, a lawyer at the Kyiv-based Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine who provides legal counseling to Hetman. The European Commission coordinates monitoring of how countries are applying the Schengen rules, with a number of countries selected for an evaluation each year. Evaluations are carried out by teams of national experts with the support of EU agencies like Frontex and Europol.   These evaluations are presented in Schengen country reports, which include recommendations for each country, while the Commission prepares an overall Schengen Scoreboard each year to sum up progress on implementing those recommendations and to highlight any issues requiring urgent attention. “Even the best evaluations are ineffective if the political will is lacking in the Commission and the Member States to comply with the applicable Schengen rules,” said German Social Democrat MEP Birgit Sippel. “The von der Leyen Commission has been conspicuously lacking in this will in recent years, not least in its handling of the reintroduction of internal border controls in Germany and the rejection of asylum seekers at internal borders. To preserve the Schengen area, internal border controls must therefore be lifted as quickly as possible.” HOW BRUSSELS WILL JUDGE COMPLIANCE Germany will soon have to answer in front of its Schengen peers.  The looming evaluation will deploy a Commission-coordinated team of more than 60 experts to conduct on-the-ground visits, request documents and data, and question the authorities responsible for implementing Schengen rules. Investigators are charged with measuring whether system-wide checks and balances successfully prevent alerts from being deployed in a de facto automatic or categorical manner. The most telling way to assess whether the system protects individual rights is to examine how it works in practice, said an EU bureaucrat familiar with the evaluation process, such as by checking how many people request access to their data, how many seek rectification or deletion of alerts, and how often those requests lead to corrections or removals. Another indicator is whether the safeguards are actually used — including the existence of court challenges and whether national procedures allow people to meaningfully contest a decision.  “The Schengen monitoring mechanism is a very technocratic tool. It can produce information on defaults and problems — but it doesn’t trickle down to enforcement,” said Romain Lanneau of Statewatch, a London-based NGO that tracks Schengen enforcement and EU police databases.  Any ability to detect systemwide patterns is hampered by a failure of member nations to comprehensively disclose their use of the Schengen Information System, as Europe’s board of national privacy regulators claimed in a Feb. 4 report on the subject. The European Data Protection Board said “missing data” makes assessing compliance with privacy rules “problematic,” and that sharing information on people’s data subject rights is “very important for the successful operation of the SIS.” Chloé Berthélémy, senior policy adviser at European digital rights group EDRi, said disregard for data protection requirements is a “long-standing issue in EU police cooperation” and one that has “never [been] addressed seriously by the Commission.”  “For people affected, it is hard to understand who gets monitored, stopped, deported, or refused entry, and why. These decisions can have far-reaching consequences and alter lives. The Commission should step up efforts to address this serious lack of compliance with obligations by Member States’ police authorities,” she said.  The available data nonetheless suggests stark differences in how countries handle requests from people to access, amend or erase their data in the Schengen database, whether those requests were granted, as well as details of court cases taken by data subjects. In 2024 alone, Germany received 4,169 access requests from individuals flagged in the system, but granted only around half of them, far fewer than other countries contending with a comparable volume. Slovenia, for example, received 4,249 requests and granted almost all of them, according to figures reviewed by POLITICO.  “What data protection should mean is that you can check what data has been stored, and whether it needs to be corrected or deleted,” Lanneau said. “The fact that there’s no information on whether law enforcement authorities are respecting these rights is maddening.”

Most Europeans want their governments to have more control over their borders to tackle migration, polling across 23 EU countries shows. Seventy-one percent of respondents agreed that “the European Union needs to allow member states much greater control of their own borders, so that countries can better manage immigration,” according to a survey of 11,714 people across Europe that was carried out by strategic communications firm FGS Global and shared exclusively with POLITICO. The findings highlight countries’ skepticism of the EU’s migration coordination, an area long defined by bickering and finger-pointing, at a time when Brussels is working on major reforms to bolster protection of the bloc’s external borders and increase support for countries that receive the bulk of arrivals.  Yet a move away from EU-level coordination and toward national border control could undermine Europe’s flagship passport-free travel zone, the Schengen area. Countries in the Schengen area — 25 of which are in the EU, while four aren’t — have committed to remove checks on internal borders. While it is possible to temporarily reintroduce controls as a last-resort response to a serious threat, that’s supposed to be limited to six-month periods, which can only be extended to up to two years. Since 2025, 12 EU governments have notified the European Commission they are imposing temporary border controls, eight of which listed migration as a motive for doing so. Some countries have in practice had border checks in place for years. EU ministers met in Cyprus last week to hash out how to halt migration across the EU’s internal borders to protect Schengen. The continued existence of the check-free travel zone “relies on trust and shared responsibility,” Cypriot Justice Minister Costas Fytiris said. That question of shared responsibility has long haunted EU migration debates, which weigh the pressure on countries that receive the bulk of arriving migrants, such as Italy and Greece, against the impact on countries elsewhere in the bloc as a result of secondary movements, i.e. onward travel from the EU country where migrants first arrive. “It’s all about responsibility on the one hand, from those countries that are at the external border. But also solidarity on the other side; from the member states which are affected by secondary movements,” Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner told POLITICO. Yet the challenge of finding an EU-level answer to immigration management remains. Throughout preparations for the first so-called solidarity pool, a framework that seeks to better share the migration burden among EU countries, governments have disagreed about who owes whom what. Support for “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece can come in the form of financial contributions or relocations — with several countries, including Belgium and Sweden, already ruling out relocations. Belgium’s Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt told POLITICO that Belgium’s initial solidarity contribution had already been lowered to €12.9 million and that the country is in talks with Italy and Greece to figure out “how we can account for historical [secondary] movements and see whether we can further lower that amount,” she said. With many countries now focused on the migratory implications of the EU’s signature borderless travel area, Luxembourg has become something of a lone Schengen crusader. The country “regrets” that the debates about Europe’s free-travel area and migration have become so intertwined, Home Affairs Minister Léon Gloden told POLITICO. “Schengen is much more than just migration.” Secondary movements aren’t a Schengen problem, he argued — they only mean that the bloc needs to cooperate better and strengthen controls on its external borders. “The illegal migration does not take place between Luxembourg and Germany,” Gloden said. The small country has lodged a complaint against migration-linked checks on Germany’s borders, which have landed the thousands of commuters that enter Luxembourg on a daily basis in major traffic jams. When the Schengen zone was built, it was “not linked to migration … [It] should facilitate the free movement of people, not hinder [it],” he said. FGS interviewed 11,714 adults from 23 European Union countries between Nov. 10 and Nov. 23, 2025. A minimum of 500 interviews were conducted in each of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Interviews were conducted online and the data was weighted to be nationally representative of each country by gender, age, income, region and socio-economic group. Data from a nationally representative poll of 500 adults is accurate to a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent at 95 percent confidence.

SEPARATED BY WAR — AND BY SCHENGEN Designed to keep Europe safe, a security system is trapping Ukrainian ex-prisoners — including victims of Russian occupation — leaving families torn apart with no clear path out of legal limbo. By EKATERINA BODYAGINA Yuliia Hetman, 35, holds a photograph of her son Bogdan in the room where she is temporarily living in Kyiv. | Johanna Maria Fritz/Agentur Ostkreuz for POLITICO Vitaly and Bogdan Osipov found refuge from Russia’s full-scale invasion in central Germany, but for nearly two years the father and son have been waiting for Yuliia Hetman — Vitaly’s partner and Bogdan’s mother — to join them. What keeps the family apart is no longer the war itself, but a European Union database.  The family is among a growing number of Ukrainians caught in a trap created by the bloc’s security architecture. Ukrainian nationals serving sentences in Ukrainian prisons seized by Russian forces — or who were forcibly transferred to Russia by occupying forces during the war — are being flagged in the EU’s Schengen Information System as potential threats to public order and internal security. Advertisement Hetman, who was serving a sentence for violent crime in a Mariupol prison when the war began, completed her sentence under Russian occupation. She has since managed to leave the occupied city, but she cannot reunite with her family in Germany, stalled at the Polish border by a German-issued alert that bars her from entering much of Europe. “These people survived war, abduction and abuse in Russian detention,” said Hanna Skrypka, a lawyer at the Kyiv-based NGO Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine. “They are victims of war crimes — not security threats.” Our investigation found that Ukrainian authorities shared with law-enforcement agency Europol the names of at least 3,738 former prisoners who had been held in penal institutions in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO. Vitaly Osipov, 48, and his son Bogdan, 13, found refuge in the central German town of Rotenburg an der Fulda. | Alex Kraus for POLITICO While Ukrainian authorities say they made no requests to flag individuals in the EU’s Schengen Information System, former detainees, rights groups and lawyers say the information-sharing coincided with a surge in entry bans — separating families and leaving former prisoners trapped by opaque security decisions they cannot meaningfully challenge. “We should be very careful not to treat Ukrainians from temporarily occupied territories as a security threat by default,” said Thijs Reuten, a Dutch center-left MEP and the European Parliament’s shadow rapporteur on Ukraine. “Ukrainians are our allies — they are fighting for their freedom and for democracy.” “Once someone is on a list,” continued Reuten, “who is accountable for getting them off?”  FROM A BESIEGED PRISON TO A CLOSED BORDER Hetman was three years into a five-year sentence, for causing bodily harm to a man she says assaulted her, when women’s penal colony No. 107 in Mariupol was sealed off from the outside world in February 2022. Prison authorities suspended access to telephones and television as Russia launched its full-scale invasion. “We suspected something was happening, but didn’t know what exactly,” she recalled. Soon, shelling began. Prison staff fled. Water and electricity disappeared. Toilets were destroyed. The women dug pits, cooked over open fires and slept in basements. About a month into Russia’s assault on Mariupol, Russian forces took control of the city’s women’s prison — subjecting the Ukrainian prisoners held there to a harsher regime marked by forced labor and arbitrary rules. Yuliia stands in front of the bombed-out house next to her temporary accommodation in Kyiv. | Johanna Maria Fritz/Agentur Ostkreuz for POLITICO “Life changed completely,” Hetman says. “For the smallest violation, everyone was punished.” Forty kilometers away, Osipov and his son were hiding in the basement of their neighbors’ house, near the home where the family had lived together before Yuliia’s imprisonment — surviving on canned food they cooked over open fires. Neither partner knew the other was alive.  After nearly six months underground, volunteers offered Osipov a route into the European Union via Russia and Belarus. Before leaving Ukraine, he and his 13-year-old son Bogdan braved Russian shelling to visit the penal colony in Mariupol. Osipov explained to a Russian soldier at the gate that Hetman had been imprisoned inside. The soldier let him enter. “We saw each other and burst into tears,” recalled Osipov. Advertisement Hetman completed her sentence a year later. After her release in September 2023, she made plans to travel to Germany, where Osipov and Bogdan had settled in Rotenburg an der Fulda, a quiet riverside town where relatives already lived. Vitaly and Bogdan cleaned their apartment, bought groceries — and waited. Then, early one morning, Hetman called from the Ukrainian-Polish border, crying. “They won’t let me in,” she said, according to Osipov’s recollection.  Polish authorities at the Dorohusk checkpoint told her she was barred from entering the European Union. They had found her name attached to an alert in the Schengen Information System.  INSIDE THE DATABASE THAT SEPARATED A UKRAINIAN FAMILY Europe’s guaranteed freedom of movement relies on a database. The Schengen Information System joins the bloc’s border-control and law-enforcement authorities to share real-time alerts during police checks and along its external perimeter. The system consists of a central database technically operated by the EU agency eu-LISA, under the oversight of the European Commission, national systems in each participating country, and a secure network linking them. How and why individuals are entered into the Schengen Information System can be difficult to trace — including for those affected by the listings themselves. Each Schengen country is responsible for creating, maintaining and enforcing its own alerts, which are immediately visible and enforceable across all other participating states. While national authorities formally refuse entry at the external border checkpoints they manage, the underlying decision to place an SIS alert may have been taken earlier by another member state, without the involvement of the country carrying out the check. Advertisement Information relevant to SIS alerts may be shared via Europol, the EU’s criminal intelligence and law-enforcement coordination agency, which has no arrest powers of its own but facilitates the exchange of information among national authorities via coordination offices known as SIRENE bureaus. Europol itself does not issue SIS alerts, but information shared through the agency may be passed on to member states, which then decide independently whether to enter or maintain an alert. Hetman’s name appears to have found its way into the database as part of the list of former prisoners in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories shared with Europol in early 2023. While Ukrainian authorities say their government shared the list for informational purposes only, Hetman’s name later appeared in the Schengen Information System “for the purpose of refusing entry,” according to a Polish border refusal decision reviewed by POLITICO. The alert appears to have originated in Germany. The country’s Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed, in a response to a data-access request reviewed by POLITICO, that the refusal-of-entry alert was issued by Germany and remains in force unless withdrawn by the issuing authority. (A certificate from Poland’s Office for Foreigners shows that Poland did not play a role.) Germany’s federal police office said there was no blanket treatment of former detainees as a security risk and that it had no knowledge of such a practice. The agency did not respond to follow-up questions after we identified documents showing that German authorities had issued refusal-of-entry alerts in multiple such cases. Yuliia in the room where she is currently living in Kyiv. | Johanna Maria Fritz/Agentur Ostkreuz for POLITICO Polish border guards told POLITICO that they see only the identifying data and the instruction to refuse entry — not the reasons for the listing — and conduct no individualized assessment at the border. Issuing authorities may lawfully withhold that information on security grounds, leaving affected individuals aware of the ban but often unable to determine why it was imposed or how to challenge it. The structure leaves responsibility fragmented: Information flows across borders, but decision-making and accountability remain national — and often opaque. In five separate instances reviewed by POLITICO involving former Ukrainian prisoners who served sentences in Russian-occupied territories or who were forcibly transferred by Russian forces from Ukrainian prisons, border authorities across multiple EU countries enforced entry bans based solely on active SIS alerts, without citing any issues with passports, visas, overstays or travel documents. According to Skrypka, a small number of former prisoners who still had valid passports were able to cross directly from Russia into the Schengen area in early 2023. She said she was aware of five such cases, all of which occurred before Ukrainian authorities shared a list of former prisoners with Europol. After that information-sharing, she said, at least 10 former prisoners who attempted the same route were refused entry at Schengen borders. The organization now advises former prisoners not to attempt to cross those borders. Advertisement Europol confirmed to POLITICO that it processes “operational data” from Ukraine under a long-standing cooperation agreement, but did not address whether information about former Ukrainian prisoners was later shared with member states in a way that contributed to SIS refusal-of-entry bans. In a written reply to POLITICO, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said it is overseeing criminal investigations into the deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainians from occupied territories to Russia or Crimea — acts classified under Ukrainian law as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The office added that it had no information indicating that former detainees recognized as victims in such proceedings were treated as security threats or subjected to restrictions abroad, including difficulties crossing borders or reuniting with family members. “Why Ukrainian authorities passed the list to Europol, we don’t know,” said Skrypka, whose Kyiv-based NGO supports Ukrainian prisoners and documents abuses linked to Russian aggression. “What does Europol have to do with it?” HOW A SCHENGEN ALERT FOLLOWS UKRAINIANS ACROSS BORDERS Vasyl Soldatov, 48, a Ukrainian former prisoner forcibly transferred to Russia during the war, was released in May 2025 into Russian-occupied Crimea. By then, his wife was living in the Czech Republic as a war refugee, and he hoped to continue his arduous journey directly to her. Soldatov explored his potential routes from Crimea to the Czech Republic. While still in Crimea, Soldatov was informed by Czech authorities he was subject to a refusal-of-entry alert in the Schengen system, entered not by the Czech Republic but — as in Hetman’s case — by German authorities. Advertisement In a written response reviewed by POLITICO, Czech police said Soldatov is not listed in the country’s national register of “undesirable persons” and stressed that there is no general practice or internal instruction to automatically treat people who have been held in, or transferred through, occupied territories of Ukraine as security risks.  Both EU and national laws require Schengen refusal-of-entry alerts to be based on objective, case-specific grounds. Prisoners-rights advocates argue that some European countries were violating that standard by instead using automatic or collective groupings, like the generalized suspicion attached to the label “former prisoner.” Hugues de Suremain, legal director of the European Prison Litigation Network, added that while Ukrainian authorities have cited risks of coercion or recruitment by Russian security services in general terms, he has not seen evidence of documented, individualized assessments that would justify blanket measures applied without individual review. Without that, said de Suremain, war-affected detainees risk being treated as suspects by default. Vitaly and Bogdan have not seen their partner and mother, Yuliia, since the summer of 2022. | Alex Kraus for POLITICO Germany’s Interior Ministry told POLITICO that refusal-of-entry alerts are issued following individualized assessments and that authorities may take into account information received via Europol when evaluating security risks. The ministry said it does not keep statistics on how often such alerts are applied to specific categories and declined to comment on concerns raised by human rights organizations that former detainees could be treated as security risks due to fears of recruitment by Russian intelligence services. However, neither Germany’s Interior Ministry nor Federal Criminal Police Office explained how such individualized assessments were conducted in cases involving former Ukrainian prisoners, or whether information shared via Europol contributed to those decisions. “Once a name starts circulating through law-enforcement channels, it can be very hard to undo,” said de Suremain, who represents several former Ukrainian prisoners before the European Court of Human Rights. Advertisement Like many former prisoners who find their movements blocked, Soldatov still does not know exactly how his name entered the database. While individuals have the right to seek access to, correction or deletion of SIS data, requests must be directed to the country that entered the alert, and authorities may lawfully withhold the underlying grounds in security-related cases. In the case of Poland, the country’s Ombudsman office said in a statement that when database entries rely on classified security-service information, individuals may be unable to see or meaningfully challenge the evidence against them, leaving judicial review as the primary safeguard. Soldatov, meanwhile, managed to return to Ukraine with help from Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine, traveling from Crimea into Russia and then via Belarus. He is counting the days until May, when Czech authorities have told him the Schengen Information System refusal-of-entry order will expire. WHEN SECURITY SYSTEMS LEAVE NO SAFE ROUTE Even former Russian prisoners who do not intend to live in the European Union, but simply seek to pass through it on their way back to Ukraine, can be blocked by Schengen refusal-of-entry alerts. For Ukrainians released from Russian prisons, legal exit routes are limited. Reaching Ukraine typically requires traversing Russia’s western borders, including into Schengen states such as Norway, Finland, Estonia or Latvia — where former prisoners flagged in the Schengen system are turned away even when seeking only onward travel back to Ukraine.  Passage through Belarus, meanwhile, remains an option only for those with valid Ukrainian passports — documents many former prisoners no longer have. Eastern Ukraine remains an active war zone. Advertisement That typically forces those hoping to leave Russia for Ukraine to route themselves through Georgia, where former prisoners can approach the Ukrainian embassy to obtain documents and then attempt onward travel through third countries. But when problems arise at the Russian–Georgian border — including transit refusals or prolonged administrative detention — the journey can collapse altogether. Last summer, 80 former detainees were held for weeks in a windowless basement near one border crossing, dependent on charities for food and medical care, their attorneys argued to the European Court for Human Rights. “People cannot reunite with their families — and they cannot even get home safely,” said Skrypka. “SIS entry bans affect both.” THE LONG WAIT For Osipov, every weekday now begins the same way. At 5 a.m., after preparing breakfast for his son Bogdan, he boards a commuter train for a 30-minute ride to a fish-processing facility in nearby Neukirchen, where he spends the day washing and sorting caviar. He returns home around nine in the evening, cooks dinner for his son — and prepares lunch for the next day. “At work, phones are forbidden except during breaks. I call Bogdan immediately,” Osipov says. “My heart bleeds knowing he’s alone all day.” Vitaly and Bogdan in their apartment in Rotenburg an der Fulda, Germany. | Alex Kraus for POLITICO They haven’t seen Hetman since the summer of 2022. “My son asks every day when his mother will come,” Osipov says. “I have no answer.” Those who work on Ukraine issues in Brussels say they know of no coordinated effort to reassess how Schengen security systems are applied to Ukrainians who spent time in Russian-run prisons.“This is a special situation that needs to be dealt with in a special way,” said Reuten, the European Parliament’s shadow rapporteur on Ukraine. “Otherwise, we risk separating people from their families for years during wartime — and that is unacceptable.”

BRUSSELS — A new EU rule mandating that a higher proportion of passengers pass through electronic identity border checks risks “wreaking significant discomfort on travelers,” warned the head of the bloc’s airport lobby. But a Commission spokesperson insisted that the electronic check system, which first went into limited use in October with a higher proportion of travelers to be checked from Friday, “has operated largely without issues.” The new Entry/Exit System is aimed at replacing passport stamps and cracking down on illegal stays in the bloc. Under the new system, travelers from third countries like the U.K. and the U.S. must register fingerprints and a facial image the first time they cross the frontier before reaching a border officer. But those extra steps are causing delays. In October, 10 percent of passengers had to use the new system; as of Friday, at least 35 percent of non-EU nationals entering the Schengen area for a short stay must use it. By April 10, the system will be fully in place. Its introduction last year caused issues at many airports, and industry worries that Friday’s step-up will cause a repeat. The EES “has resulted in border control processing times at airports increasing by up to 70 percent, with waiting times of up to three hours at peak traffic periods,” said Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, adding that Friday’s new mandate is “sure to create even worse conditions.” Brussels Airport spokesperson Ihsane Chioua Lekhli said: “The introduction of EES has an impact on the waiting time for passengers and increases the need for sufficient staffing at border control,” adding: “Peak waiting times at arrival (entry of Belgium) can go up to three hours, and we also saw an increase of waiting times at departures.” But the Commission rejected the accusation that EES is wreaking havoc at EU airports. “Since its start, the system has operated largely without issues, even during the peak holiday period, and any initial challenges typical of new systems have been effectively addressed, moreover with it, we know who enter in the EU, when, and where,” said Markus Lammert, the European Commission’s spokesperson for internal affairs. Lamert said countries “have refuted the claim” made by ACI Europe of increased waiting times and that concerns over problems related to the new 35 percent threshold have been “disproven.” That’s in stark contrast with the view of the airport lobby, which pointed to recent problems in Portugal. Under the new system, travelers from third countries like the U.K. and the U.S. must register fingerprints and a facial image the first time they cross the frontier before reaching a border officer. | iStock “There are mounting operational issues with the EES rollout — the case in point being the suspension of the system by the Portuguese government over the holidays,” Jankovec said. In late December, the Portuguese government suspended the EES at Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport for three months and deployed military personnel to bolster border control capabilities. ADR, which operates Rome Fiumicino Airport, is also seeing issues. “Operational conditions are proving highly complex, with a significant impact on passenger processing times at border controls,” ADR said in a written reply. Spain’s hotel industry association asked the country’s interior ministry to beef up staffing, warning of “recurring bottlenecks at border controls.” “It is unreasonable that, after a journey of several hours, tourists should face waits of an hour or more to enter the country,” said Jorge Marichal, the lobby’s president. The Spanish interior ministry said the EES is being used across the country with “no queues or significant incidents reported to date.” However, not all airports are having trouble implementing the new system. The ADP Group, which manages the two largest airports in Paris, said it has “not observed any chaos or increase in waiting times at this stage.”

BRUSSELS — Russia’s drones and agents are unleashing attacks across NATO countries and Europe is now doing what would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago: planning how to hit back. Ideas range from joint offensive cyber operations against Russia, and faster and more coordinated attribution of hybrid attacks by quickly pointing the finger at Moscow, to surprise NATO-led military exercises, according to two senior European government officials and three EU diplomats. “The Russians are constantly testing the limits — what is the response, how far can we go?” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže noted in an interview. A more “proactive response is needed,” she told POLITICO. “And it’s not talking that sends a signal — it’s doing.” Russian drones have buzzed Poland and Romania in recent weeks and months, while mysterious drones have caused havoc at airports and military bases across the continent. Other incidents include GPS jamming, incursions by fighter aircraft and naval vessels, and an explosion on a key Polish rail link ferrying military aid to Ukraine. “Overall, Europe and the alliance must ask themselves how long we are willing to tolerate this type of hybrid warfare … [and] whether we should consider becoming more active ourselves in this area,” German State Secretary for Defense Florian Hahn told Welt TV last week. Hybrid attacks are nothing new. Russia has in recent years sent assassins to murder political enemies in the U.K., been accused of blowing up arms storage facilities in Central Europe, attempted to destabilize the EU by financing far-right political parties, engaged in social media warfare, and tried to upend elections in countries like Romania and Moldova. But the sheer scale and frequency of the current attacks are unprecedented. Globsec, a Prague-based think tank, calculated there were more than 110 acts of sabotage and attempted attacks carried out in Europe between January and July, mainly in Poland and France, by people with links to Moscow. “Today’s world offers a much more open — indeed, one might say creative — space for foreign policy,” Russian leader Vladimir Putin said during October’s Valdai conference, adding: “We are closely monitoring the growing militarization of Europe. Is it just rhetoric, or is it time for us to respond?” Russia may see the EU and NATO as rivals or even enemies — former Russian President and current deputy Kremlin Security Council head Dmitry Medvedev last month said: “The U.S. is our adversary.” However, Europe does not want war with a nuclear-armed Russia and so has to figure out how to respond in a way that deters Moscow but does not cross any Kremlin red lines that could lead to open warfare. That doesn’t mean cowering, according to Swedish Chief of Defense Gen. Michael Claesson. “We cannot allow ourselves to be fearful and have a lot of angst for escalation,” he said in an interview. “We need to be firm.” So far, the response has been to beef up defenses. After Russian war drones were shot down over Poland, NATO said it would boost the alliance’s drone and air defenses on its eastern flank — a call mirrored by the EU. Even that is enraging Moscow. Europeans “should be afraid and tremble like dumb animals in a herd being driven to the slaughter,” said Medvedev. “They should soil themselves with fear, sensing their near and agonizing end.” SWITCHING GEARS Frequent Russian provocations are changing the tone in European capitals. After deploying 10,000 troops to protect Poland’s critical infrastructure following the sabotage of a rail line linking Warsaw and Kyiv, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Friday accused Moscow of engaging in “state terrorism.” After the incident, the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said such threats posed an “extreme danger” to the bloc, arguing it must “have a strong response” to the attacks. Last week, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto slammed the continent’s “inertia” in the face of growing hybrid attacks and unveiled a 125-page plan to retaliate. In it he suggested establishing a European Center for Countering Hybrid Warfare, a 1,500-strong cyber force, as well as military personnel specialized in artificial intelligence. “Everybody needs to revise their security procedures,” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski added on Thursday. “Russia is clearly escalating its hybrid war against EU citizens.” WALK THE TALK Despite the increasingly fierce rhetoric, what a more muscular response means is still an open question. Part of that is down to the difference between Moscow and Brussels — the latter is more constrained by acting within the rules, according to Kevin Limonier, a professor and deputy director at the Paris-based GEODE think tank. “This raises an ethical and philosophical question: Can states governed by the rule of law afford to use the same tools … and the same strategies as the Russians?” he asked. So far, countries like Germany and Romania are strengthening rules that would allow authorities to shoot down drones flying over airports and militarily sensitive objects. National security services, meanwhile, can operate in a legal gray zone. Allies from Denmark to the Czech Republic already allow offensive cyber operations. The U.K. reportedly hacked into ISIS’s networks to obtain information on an early-stage drone program by the terrorist group in 2017. Allies must “be more proactive on the cyber offensive,” said Braže, and focus on “increasing situational awareness — getting security and intelligence services together and coordinated.” In practice, countries could use cyber methods to target systems critical to Russia’s war effort, like the Alabuga economic zone in Tatarstan in east-central Russia, where Moscow is producing Shahed drones, as well as energy facilities or trains carrying weapons, said Filip Bryjka, a political scientist and hybrid threat expert at the Polish Academy of Sciences. “We could attack the system and disrupt their functioning,” he said. Europe also has to figure out how to respond to Russia’s large-scale misinformation campaigns with its own efforts inside the country. “Russian public opinion … is somewhat inaccessible,” said one senior military official. “We need to work with allies who have a fairly detailed understanding of Russian thinking — this means that cooperation must also be established in the field of information warfare.” Still, any new measures “need to have plausible deniability,” said one EU diplomat. SHOW OF FORCE NATO, for its part, is a defensive organization and so is leery of offensive operations. “Asymmetric responses are an important part of the conversation,” said one NATO diplomat, but “we aren’t going to stoop to the same tactics as Russia.” Instead, the alliance should prioritize shows of force that illustrate strength and unity, said Oana Lungescu, a former NATO spokesperson and fellow with London’s Royal United Services Institute think tank. In practice, that means rapidly announcing whether Moscow is behind a hybrid attack and running ‘no-notice’ military exercises on the Russian border with Lithuania or Estonia. Meanwhile, the NATO-backed Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, which brings together allied officials, is also “providing expertise and training” and drafting “policies to counter those threats,” said Maarten ten Wolde, a senior analyst at the organization.  “Undoubtedly, more should be done on hybrid,” said one senior NATO diplomat, including increasing collective attribution after attacks and making sure to “show through various means that we pay attention and can shift assets around in a flexible way.” Jacopo Barigazzi, Nicholas Vinocur, Nette Nöstlinger, Antoaneta Roussi and Seb Starvecic contributed reporting.

LUXEMBOURG — Europe’s new migration rules hit early turbulence Tuesday, with countries split over who should shoulder how much responsibility. Migration and home affairs ministers met in Luxembourg to hash out the technicalities of a new proposal on so-called return hubs and cross-border deportation powers. But on the sidelines, the political implications of who has the capacity to accept more asylum-seekers dominated. The European Commission was due to say on Wednesday which countries are struggling with migration and what help they should receive, though that’s now delayed. As set out in the new EU law governing asylum and migration — agreed in 2023, with an implementation deadline of June next year — the Commission will say which countries are under “migratory pressure.” The other governments can then choose to either accept migrants from those countries or support them with funding and staff. But countries seem far more willing to part with cash than open their doors.  Belgian Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt said on the sidelines of the meeting it will give financial contributions, as its system for accepting asylum seekers is “full.” Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, of the far-right Finns Party, said her country will “obviously” not take migrants from other EU member countries. Government policy in the Netherlands is to pay rather than receive people. Sweden’s Migration Minister Johan Forssell strongly hinted his country is not keen to take in any more migrants, with Forssell complaining it has already received “so many” asylum-seekers in the last decade. Comments like those foreshadow an obvious problem: That every country will be willing to spend cash, but not take in migrants. In that scenario, a complex system of “offsets” could kick in — and they would instead handle some asylum claims for the countries that need help, rather than receiving people who’ve been relocated. The track record of Italy and Greece — likely to be designated as recipients of that support — has not helped matters. Last year, the two countries handled only a tiny percentage of the migration cases they were supposed to as set out by the so-called Dublin rules, which stipulate which country should handle asylum applications (typically the applicant’s country of entry to the EU). Governments were also unable to agree on a system of mandatory recognition of asylum decisions taken in other EU countries, Danish Migration Minister Rasmus Stoklund, who’s currently leading discussions, said in Luxembourg. Denmark proposed a change to the Commission’s original draft, but national governments remain “too divided,” he said.  Magnus Brunner, the EU commissioner for migration, said that there is “a lot of cooperation” and will among countries to reform the system. | Sven Hoppe/Getty Images Magnus Brunner, the EU commissioner for migration, said there is “a lot of cooperation” and desire among countries to reform the system. He added that “time is of the essence” — an unsurprising comment in light of a call last year by EU leaders for “determined action” on deportations and a June deadline looming. Failure could also come with grave political costs for the EU’s center ground.  A situation where member countries refuse to implement the rules they agreed in the EU’s flagship migration pact would “fundamentally undermine the credibility of the common European asylum system,” said Alberto-Horst Neidhardt, senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre. “If that happens, as an immediate result, you would have internal border controls reinstated across the Schengen area, you would have systematic pushbacks at the external borders … the systemic implications of this would certainly threaten the Union and … there would be certainly a political spiral because the far right would claim vindication,” Neidhardt said. That’s a worst-case scenario, but this is a “very different political context” than in 2015, when the EU faced its last migration crisis, he said. “National governments are much more self-interested.”

BRUSSELS — Passengers arriving in the EU from third countries on Sunday should brace for long waits as the bloc’s new automated registration Entry/Exit System procedure goes live. “Airlines feeding into the big hubs run on tight schedules, so even a few minutes delay at border control can throw off connections,” said Montserrat Barriga, director general of the European Regions Airline Association lobby. The system will be rolled out gradually over six months, meaning not all crossing points will use it immediately. Non-EU nationals will need to stop for a longer time before a passport control officer or use self-service kiosks at airports, ports and international rail terminals to provide fingerprints and have their photo taken. On subsequent internal Schengen border crossings, travellers will not need to repeat the registration, as their data on file will be used to record their entries and exits digitally. Biometric data is retained in the EES system for three years, which is extended to five if no exit has been recorded. The system is being introduced in all Schengen zone countries — EU countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland — EU members Ireland and Cyprus aren’t included. EES will replace the current system of manually stamping passports, which doesn’t allow for automatic detection of people who have exceeded their authorized stay of 90 days within 180 days. “The Entry/Exit System is the digital backbone of our new common European migration and asylum framework,” said Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner. In the first six months, the two systems will coexist, meaning travelers may have to go through both passport and EES procedures. It becomes fully operational on April 10, when it will replace manual passport stamps.  That’s making national authorities nervous about possible chaos. Paris is bracing for more problems than other EU countries because France is the world’s leading tourist destination, with over 100 million visitors in 2024. “If tomorrow we had to pass all the passengers of a long-haul flight from China through EES, you’d triple the waiting time at the border,” said a French interior ministry official, speaking on the condition of being granted anonymity. Non-EU nationals will need to stop for a longer time before a passport control officer or use self-service kiosks at airports. | Thierry ROge/AFP via Getty Images “The additional formalities required by the EES will inevitably increase waiting times for travelers from third countries,” they added. The EU said the EES could be temporarily suspended during the first six months of implementation if wait times become too long or there are technical issues. “That’s why the phased rollout is so important, it gives airports and airlines some breathing space to adapt,” Barriga said. The Independent reported that only three countries — Estonia, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic — will have the EES in place for all arrivals and departures on Sunday. Germany announced that only Düsseldorf Airport would implement EES from Sunday, with Munich and Frankfurt airports following later. In Italy, Rome Fiumicino and Milan Malpensa Airports will be using the system as of Monday. The Netherlands will implement EES at Rotterdam The Hague Airport on Oct. 27 and at Amsterdam Schiphol on Nov. 3. Spain will only use the system for one flight into Madrid on Sunday, before gradually spreading it. According to the French official, France will hire an additional 230 border guards at the 120 French entry points to the Schengen area to handle the extra workload as the system is gradually introduced. Some airports have disclosed details about their capabilities. Brussels Airport, for example, said it has 61 self-service EES registration kiosks. “It is important to underline that the management of border crossing points lies with the member states, not with airport operators,” said Federico Bonaudi, director of facilitation at airport lobby ACI Europe. For months, the lobby has expressed concerns about “the uncertainty about how the system will perform when all the member states connect to it” as of Sunday. “Thus far, only partial tests have been done,” Bonaudi said. “The persistent understaffing of border police in certain member states” is among the concerns raised by ACI Europe. In addition, “the communications campaign targeting the travelling public to raise their awareness has been launched late in our view.” Despite these issues, “at this stage, all the necessary legal safeguards and tools have been put in place to minimize disruptions and delays on the first day of operations and the days ensuing,” Bonaudi added. The Commission set up a preregistration app aimed at making border crossings faster. However, Sweden is the only country that has confirmed it will use the app. Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.

BERLIN — Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt invited European Union counterparts to a migration summit on Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain in the Bavarian Alps, to draft proposals for stricter migration rules. Dobrindt, the Bavarian conservative in charge of executing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s tough-on-migration turn, is set to host talks with interior ministers from France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic on July 18. Also invited is the EU’s new migration czar, Austrian conservative Magnus Brunner, a spokesperson for the interior ministry in Berlin told POLITICO’s Berlin Playbook. “Citizens rightly expect order, and more control and cooperation from politicians instead of powerlessness. We want to send this signal,” Dobrindt told POLITICO. The aim of the summit is a declaration containing concrete ideas — including on border protection and deporting rejected asylum-seekers to so-called third countries, or countries outside the EU — that are to be jointly pushed forward at the European level, according to the interior ministry. Germany was long among the EU countries with a more liberal approach toward migration. But the current government, led by Merz, has vowed to drastically cut the inflow of asylum-seekers under pressure from the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the largest opposition party in Germany’s parliament. Just days after taking office this spring, Merz’s interior minister beefed up checks on Germany’s borders and vowed German police would turn away undocumented immigrants, including asylum-seekers — a move most experts deemed against EU law. The border crackdown fomented tensions between Germany and its neighbors, with politicians in France, Poland and Austria criticizing Merz’s government for inhibiting the free movement of people and goods within the Schengen Area. Earlier this week, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Warsaw’s patience with Germany “is becoming exhausted” as he announced new checks on his country’s borders with Germany and Lithuania. Dobrindt and Merz defended the national border checks by arguing they are a temporary step while they work toward migration reforms on the EU level. “We must strengthen the possibility of repatriation,” Dobrindt told German magazine Focus in an interview earlier this week. “This requires the removal of the connecting element, as entailed in the CEAS, according to which refugees must have a connection to the country to which they are returned,” he continued, referring to the Common European Asylum System. “We want to abolish this and at the same time expand our strategic partnerships with third countries,” he added, without naming specific countries. In a similar move in May, the European Commission proposed changing EU law to allow the deportation of migrants to countries outside the EU — a proposal that human rights groups sharply criticized. In separate comments, Dobrindt also told Focus he wants to close a deal with the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan to deport Afghans who were found to have committed crimes in Germany. He would consider making “agreements directly with Afghanistan to enable repatriations,” he said. All diplomatic and political ties between Berlin and Kabul were cut when the Taliban returned to power in 2021.