Germany’s border controls violate the EU’s Schengen Agreement on freedom of travel, a court in the western city of Koblenz ruled on Monday, in a case brought by a law professor.<\/p>\n
The Koblenz Administrative Court said the German police acted unlawfully in verifying the man’s identity in June 2025 as he crossed the border from Luxembourg into Germany.<\/p>\n
Controls have been in place on all Germany’s borders since September 16, 2024. They have been extended three times, most recently until September 2026.<\/p>\n
However, the court found that the extension of border checks from March to September 2025 was in violation of the Schengen rules, under which member states are only allowed to carry out border controls when public order or internal security are threatened.<\/p>\n
While countries in the Schengen Area are entitled to make their own assessment of the threat situation, the court said the German state’s justification for its action did not have a “sound factual basis.”<\/p>\n
The judges ruled that references to individual acts of violence committed by foreign nationals did not \u201callow the conclusion that the national authorities were generally overwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plaintiff Dominik Brodowski, a professor at Saarland University, said the decision sends a “strong signal for European integration, for European unification and also for Schengen law.”<\/p>\n
The court has made a fundamental statement on the legality of internal border controls, he told dpa. “This should really give politicians food for thought and not be dismissed as a one-off decision.”<\/p>\n
The decision can be appealed to the Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate.<\/p>\n
An Interior Ministry spokeswoman said the ministry is aware of the decision and will decide whether to lodge an appeal.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff was travelling by coach from Luxembourg to Saarbr\u00fccken when he was subjected to an identity check at the crossing from the Luxembourgish town of Schengen to Germany’s Perl.<\/p>\n
He brought the case because he was convinced that the border controls violated the Schengen Borders Code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany’s border controls violate the EU’s Schengen Agreement on freedom of travel, a court in the western city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1574,550,1572,1571,1575,5,1576,1573,878],"class_list":{"0":"post-5772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-luxembourg","8":"tag-border-controls","9":"tag-germany","10":"tag-identity-check","11":"tag-koblenz-administrative-court","12":"tag-law-professor","13":"tag-luxembourg","14":"tag-police-officers","15":"tag-schengen-agreement","16":"tag-schengen-area"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@lu\/116476874950613596","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}