German border checks: Impact on international rail travel?

[Giugiaro]

Has anyone ever been through border checks on international railway connections to and from Germany?

The federal government announced the reintroduction of land border checks in all its neighboring countries starting on September 16.
This essentially means the temporary suspension of the Schengen agreement in Germany.

I have a journey for Innotrans at the end of September, which I'll be doing by rail. So far I have not received any news from European Sleeper regarding this change of rules, and what documentation or forms are needed to cross the border into Germany.
Considering that I'm an EU citizen, I'm expecting that only a valid EU ID card should be enough. I don't currently have a passport, nor do I intend to spend 85€ and two leave days to get one.

Additional information regarding the German government's decision:

Germany to Introduce Border Controls at All Land Borders on September 16​

Bleona Restelica - September 10, 2024

The German authorities have announced that the country will introduce temporary internal border controls at all its land borders.
As the Minister of Interior of Germany Nancy Faeser revealed, the controls at all borders will begin on September 16, and they will initially remain in place for a period of six months.

By introducing border controls, Germany wants to protect national security as well as curb the number of foreigners attempting to enter the country without valid visas and irregular migration in general.

Commenting on the move, Minister Faeser said that checks are especially important now that the country has been recording high numbers of threats from Islamist terror groups.

While the border controls have not yet become effective, Minister Faeser explained that the country has already informed the EU Commission about this decision.

Once the checks enter into force, controls will apply to the land borders with Austria, Belgium, Czechia, France, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. Germany shares a more than 3,700 km long border with these nine countries.

Germany’s Current Border Controls Were Set to Remain in Place Until December 15​

Germany has been maintaining border controls with Austria, Czechia, Poland and Switzerland for some time now.

The measures were initially intended for a short period of time. However, following increased irregular migration and security concerns, the country continuously prolonged this measure.

The border measures were set to remain effective until mid-December for all countries except Austria, but now that Germany has decided to introduce another measure, the checks will be in place until mid-March.

While Germany sees the measure as necessary, some of its neighbouring countries have not been very happy about the move.

The Austrian Minister of Interior, Gerhard Karner, said that Austria would not take in any migrants rejected by Germany, stressing that “there’s no room for manoeuvre there”.

The spokesperson of the Czech Ministry of Interior, Hana Malá, also previously said that the measures could have a negative impact. Malá said that the further extension of border controls by Germany would lead to a domino effect of checks throughout the Schengen Area.

In addition, the spokesperson said that the checks would also cause delays at the border.

Source: Schengen News

 

[sh24]

ID should be fine. It's essentially the position the UK was in pre-Brexit where it's outside Schengen but inside the Single market.

 

[stuu]

I crossed from Austria last month, the border check involved a couple of police officers walking through the carriage. They didn't ask anyone for ID, presumably everyone in our carriage was the correct profile to be allowed into Germany.

 

[Cloud Strife]

ID cards are fine.

 

[nwales58]

Also, despite all the jokes about the Vennbahn and the collective Benelux governments' howl about not obstructing day workers, in practice Germany is only worried about the upstream migration countries on its eastern borders and you're approaching from the west.

My experience of the bavarians at Freilassing and Rosenheim (rearmost door only opened until the check is complete) is that they walk through, ignore us pensioners and check a very small number of younger people usually those with luggage. I don't recall a check at Passau ever - anyone else?

 

[Gag Halfrunt]

Germany’s complete disregard of Schengen – ethically wrong, and practically unworkable

Back in the autumn of last year, in a train in Freilassing, a German police officer came through the carriage and asked for everyone's passport. "Why are you checking all the passengers on this train?" I asked him, in German.

euroblog.jonworth.eu

So when Germany’s Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser announces that Germany is going to do border controls at all of its borders, she simply cannot mean all the borders. For controlling even all the border crossings is simply impossible – practically. The German state does not have the financial and human resources to do it, even if Faeser wanted to.

Sure, they will station some more police at big roads, delay some more trains on main lines, and pick on more passengers who look like they are from ethnic minorities. But any criminal who is semi-organised would be able to get around the controls amazingly easily, because controls simply cannot happen everywhere. Sure, some people will be picked up by the controls – because some people migrating will be idiots, and not check where controls happen, so as to be able to get around them. That you pick up some clueless or vulnerable people is not a proof that your policy is working.

And meanwhile the more controls happen, so it inconveniences people who have to cross borders on an everyday basis – the very people for whom the promise of European integration actually mattered on to their daily lives.

 

[DanielB]

I crossed the German border four times during my summer holidays (when checks were also announced) and encountered exactly zero border checks...
Coming from Austria the checks in Passau were even mentioned in the timetable, but didn't happen.

 

[stuu]

My journey mentioned above involved the check happening at Passau, there were police on the train and 10-12 officers visible on the platform. The train wasn't stopped for more than 5 minutes though

 

[185]

They held up my train at Frankfurt Am Oder and of the 700 on board they got one American off whose passport emerged from the bottom of his rucksack after 30 minutes of searching on the platform. Reminded me of Herr Flick... vee hav vays of making you... late.

 

[stuartmoss]

There are very often police officers travelling between Bad Schandau and Dresden on the international train (in both directions). I’ve made the journey many times and never been asked to show ID but I’ve seen them ask others.

So are they going to wake everyone on the overnight sleeper?

I’ll be heading from Gorlitz into Poland on the 16th, so it will be interesting to see if they are checking people leaving.

 

[DeverseSam]

At Kehl, coming from Strasbourg on the stopping service, I saw them wait for everyone to get on before checking the whole train. But that doesn’t make sense because many of those people haven’t arrived from France.

 

[1D54]

A noticeable Polize presence on the Polish / German road border a couple of hours ago in readiness for Monday. Can't comment on the rail situation as RE1 is terminating at Erkner from F/O and i haven't seen a Berlin - Warsaw service today unless it is being diverted.

 

[Sieni]

There are very often police officers travelling between Bad Schandau and Dresden on the international train (in both directions). I’ve made the journey many times and never been asked to show ID but I’ve seen them ask others.

So are they going to wake everyone on the overnight sleeper?

I’ll be heading from Gorlitz into Poland on the 16th, so it will be interesting to see if they are checking people leaving.

We travelled on the sleeper from Venice to Stuttgart two days ago (night of the 10th).

An officer knocked on our cabin door to wake us up at about 0430 and asked to see our passports. This was just around the crossing from Austria to Germany near Salzburg. Both UK passport holders, fortunately they were easily to hand.

 

[Bletchleyite]

At Kehl, coming from Strasbourg on the stopping service, I saw them wait for everyone to get on before checking the whole train. But that doesn’t make sense because many of those people haven’t arrived from France.

Germany did this at the Austrian border in the 1990s when Joerg Haider was in charge, and it caused me not a small amount of hassle because I had come from Berchtesgaden and boarded at Freilassing and the border guy was convinced I'd crossed the border and didn't like that I was carrying my residents' permit instead of my passport, though I did manage to convince him in the end that I hadn't come from Austria.

(Technically you're meant to carry passport or EU ID card in Germany, but that was the only time I was asked for it "at random", and living in another country I preferred it being somewhere secure!)

 

[signed]

Germany’s complete disregard of Schengen – ethically wrong, and practically unworkable

Back in the autumn of last year, in a train in Freilassing, a German police officer came through the carriage and asked for everyone's passport. "Why are you checking all the passengers on this train?" I asked him, in German.

euroblog.jonworth.eu

They're just following France's lead

 

[AlterEgo]

The police checks don’t always involve even supplying ID or passport. Last year, I took the TGV to Frankfurt which did require me to supply my passport on board, but just the other day I did the border crossing at Passau where the police simply racially profiled people to ask them for their documents.

 

[dutchflyer]

Just now came back into NL on yet another Deutscland-Ticket trip for the weekend on the RE13/eurobahn into Venlo. Surprise-surprise-this weekend did not hardly have any delay in Germany=extremely rare. So the trouble started with a brake stop just after boarding in M-Gladbach, 10 mins up in Viersen, where also 3 BundesGrenzschutz (=border controls) Polizei came along. After yet another such stop-and a passing of a rerouted ICE, they were joined with another 2-person such team-making 5 alltogether, quite a lot for such a mostly shoppers-loaded 5-car trainset. No checks, only visual sightiing, also at intermediate stops.
Arr. Venlo with just +15, so connection missed. The Polizei did checks on all boarded after they were seated and hence train could not make its usual 5 mins turn-around-took >15, bringing the delay on dep. to +22.
On the German news on TV this early morning with some views of some Autobahn point check from smack @ 0.01.
I really wonder how long they can find so many staff if indeed any minor train and/or bus will be checked for such a long time. And how their working schemes will work out on this notoriously often delayed/cancelled train line.

 

[duesselmartin]

in the end they will concentrate on certain route and spot check. Even far back as the 1980s, the Benelux border did not have full checks and Border staff was vastly reduced since then.

 

[Oxfordblues]

Heading to Saalfeld to witness the last bastion of European steam, our train came to a halt at Probstzella bahnhof where at least twenty border guards and immigration officials were waiting to welcome us to the Socialist Fatherland. After at least an hour, once all travellers had been thoroughly processed and the grenzpolizei were satisfied that there were no troublemakers aboard, the train proceeded. We were all Europeans in those days. That was 1978.

 

[nwales58]

Oebisfelde was my experience in the early 70s. As that is open countryside I remember feeling shocked when the train stopped in a compound with high fences and a barrack building. Books were passed out to someone in the corridor for a yes/no so the Grenzer/MfS men got to decide whether paddington bear and AA Milne were a threat to the state. On the way out checks included exchange receipts to make sure we had spent enough.

The inner-german border is buried but the good times 1990-2010 are not coming back either.

 

[The exile]

At Kehl, coming from Strasbourg on the stopping service, I saw them wait for everyone to get on before checking the whole train. But that doesn’t make sense because many of those people haven’t arrived from France.

It does if your main aim is for lots of Germans to know these “controls” are now in place.

 

[alex397]

It will be interesting to see how (if at all) this will affect local bus services. For example, there’s an Aachen bus route (interestingly operated by a Belgian company on behalf of the Aachen municipal operator, still called Aachener Straßenbahn) that runs to Kelmis. It’s just an ordinary local bus service. On my visit about 5 years ago, there was a spot check with police officers boarding the bus at the border and checking everyone’s ID cards. I’m glad I remembered to pack my passport.
This appeared to be a random spot check. But will local transport have to have more checks following this ruling? Or is it likely to just continue as normal?

 

[MattSGB]

This summer, the German police were a right pain on my sleeper across the Austrian border. They took great interest In our British passports, imminently preceding the Euro football tournaments. Less football interested people they could not have found, but that didn't stop them from quizzing us when we were half asleep."When did you arrive, how did you get here, when are you leaving?". If the German authorities are going to persist in this, then we need to go back to the previous arrangements of leaving your passports/ID cards with the attendant.

 

[rvdborgt]

If the German authorities are going to persist in this, then we need to go back to the previous arrangements of leaving your passports/ID cards with the attendant.

AFAIK the authorities don't want that anymore.

 

[A S Leib]

Were there any passport / ID checks on e.g. the Kiel – Klaipeda ferry before?

 

[Bletchleyite]

AFAIK the authorities don't want that anymore.

Problem with it is that you don't see if the people on board correspond with the IDs.

 

[WestCoast]

Are they not just copying what other countries have done? Did Denmark not suspend Schengen and control every train coming from Germany for years and there were controls between Denmark and Sweden too? I’ve also always seen some sort of control on the Swiss border coming from the south despite it also being Schengen.

 

[signed]

I’ve also always seen some sort of control on the Swiss border coming from the south despite it also being Schengen.

The Swiss is probably more for custom purposes

 

[Bletchleyite]

Are they not just copying what other countries have done? Did Denmark not suspend Schengen and control every train coming from Germany for years and there were controls between Denmark and Sweden too?

It may have done now but originally Denmark was the same as the UK - joined the EU but not Schengen.

This caused me a bit of an issue ages ago when border guards didn't get that yes I actually was going to get off at Puttgarden!

I’ve also always seen some sort of control on the Swiss border coming from the south despite it also being Schengen.

Switzerland is not in the EU customs union so these are at least nominally customs rather than immigration checks. On major roads there are still border posts for this purpose though it's rather porous.

 

[WestCoast]

Oh I get that about Switzerland although I never saw much control on the other borders so I still suspect they are highly focused on Italy. The French also seem to do more checks on that border than others.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Sep 2024 ==

It may have done now but originally Denmark was the same as the UK - joined the EU but not Schengen.

This caused me a bit of an issue ages ago when border guards didn't get that yes I actually was going to get off at Puttgarden!

I can well imagine! When I lived in Munich in 2014-2015 my friend forgot her passport on a day trip to Austria and ended up managing to persuade the border police to accept her university ID returning into Germany!

The Germans have been doing lots of checks on the eastern borders for a while, I remember a FlixBus driver telling me that pretty much every bus on the Prague - Germany routes was getting pulled over. That was 2015.