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Prague News
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08.08.2008 - More illegals caught on Czech-German border imply no risk-Prague
It ensues from the statistic figures that the number of detained people who Bayreuth Festival kicks off with gala evening ...
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Czechs see more border checks ... illegally crossed the border has doubled since the border checks were abolished with Prague's Schengen entry half a year ago.
"We don't see any high risk in these cases," Foreigner Police spokeswoman Barbora Kudlackova told CTK.
She said the foreigners often cross the border because they do not know they are not authorised to do so.
A steep increase in the number of illegal crossings has also been registered Saxony, the other German land bordering on the Czech Republic.
After the extension of Schengen, border checks were replaced by random police checks in the 30-km-wide belt along the border.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said in Munich today that 633 people illegal immigrants coming from the Czech Republic were caught in Bavaria in the first half of the year, twice as many as the same period in 2007.
"Most of them, however, arrived for a short stay only," Herrmann said.
On the contrary, the number of foreigners who committed a crime in the Bavarian border zone, has dropped by one-third since the border checks' abolition, he said.
Herrmann praised the cooperation between the Bavarian and Czech police in searching people, including from the new joint police centre in Schwandorf, Bavaria.
More than 7,000 joint steps were taken in the centre in the first half of the year, including help with investigation and legal assistance, Herrmann said.
The Saxon police, too, say the number of illegal crossings from the Czech Republic has increased since Schengen's enlargement in late December 2007.
More than 1,100 such cases were registered in January-June, almost 200 more than in the same period last year.
Saxon police head Bernd Merbitz said the Saxon and the Czech police carried out over 500 joint patrols in the given period.
The number of crimes in Saxony along the Czech and Polish borders dropped to 27,000 from 31,000, except for car thefts whose number increased by 50 percent along the Czech border and almost three times along the Polish, Merbitz said.
In the Bavarian border zone, nevertheless, the number of car thefts dropped by 40 percent year-on-year.
The statistics are partly at odds with the assertion by the Federal Interior Ministry that said in late June that the number of either illegal crossings of borders or crimes had not increased along the German borders with the Czech Republic and Poland since the two countries' Schengen entry.
According to some Czech drivers and passengers of regular bus lines, the new checks in German exceed standards and remind of the abolished border checks.
Czech PM Mirek Topolanek even said this spring that he considered the toughened checks as harassment and violation of Schengen agreements.
(Ceske Noviny)
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