According to the newspaper Russkaya Germaniya, over the several weeks of preparation and holding of the G7 summit (from May 26 to June 15), 360,000 people were subjected to checks when crossing Germany's borders. 10,555 violators of the law 'On Migration Registration of Foreign Citizens and Stateless Persons in the Federal Republic of Germany' were identified. Law enforcement officers managed to find 1,056 people who were wanted and arrest 135 people for whom arrest warrants had been issued.
The checks, timed to coincide with the meeting in Elmau but carried out selectively on all borders of the FRG, revealed 237 violations of the law on the circulation of narcotic drugs, 151 cases of document forgery, and 29 cases of non-compliance with the requirements of the asylum procedure.
As a result, 692 persons were denied the right to cross the German state border, 3,517 were temporarily detained, and 77 were taken into custody. About ten thousand federal police officers were involved in border controls over several weeks in May and June.
The agreements concluded by the Schengen Agreement member states imply a complete absence of checks on internal borders between European states. The agreement provides for exceptions during serious political or sporting events, such as meetings of heads of state and government or football championships. In Germany, and especially in Bavaria, in recent weeks they tried to catch those who could disrupt the peaceful course of the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau, but they caught many law violators whose illegal actions had nothing to do with the G7 meeting. Without temporary border controls, these people would hardly ever have come to the attention of the police.
Representatives of the federal police refrained from any conclusions regarding the protection of the EU's external borders based on the above figures, stating that the available data do not allow for 'reliable conclusions.' However, in circles of high-ranking German officials and security officers directly responsible for the country's security, there is a widespread opinion about regular violations of EU legislation – in particular, those provisions that concern the nuances of granting political asylum and are known as the Dublin Agreement. According to these agreements, refugees must apply for political asylum in the first EU country they enter.
In reality, crossing the EU's external border – mainly the Italian or Greek one – does not end for many with an application to the competent authorities of those countries, but continues with a trip to Germany or other neighboring states. The absence of border controls inside the EU significantly facilitates the task for immigrants to move from one country to another, and for EU citizens, besides the long-familiar convenience of trips to nearby foreign countries, it brings not only benefits – at least the recent results of selective border checks successfully confirm this theory.
Bavaria's Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, in this regard, never tires of talking about the security problems of the entire country; Bavaria's Prime Minister and chairman of the ruling Christian Social Union, Horst Seehofer, plans to make the return of border controls a stable topic of political discussions in Berlin. The issue will first be discussed at the upcoming conference of state interior ministers in Mainz, where the interior ministers will compare the data of checks by state with federal data and try to outline further intentions regarding border controls.
However, the Schengen Agreement is one of the basic principles of European freedoms, which neither Bavaria alone nor a unified Germany can oppose. The careful choice of words with which German politicians comment on the check data indicates a full understanding of the entire complexity of the problem: it is somehow necessary to fight off intruders entering the country, but European legislation provides virtually no legal methods for doing so.