Last month, German Ministers instituted temporary checks on Germany's borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. Last week, those border checks were extended. All of those countries and Austria where Germany has kept "temporary" border checks for years, fall within the ostensibly border-free Schengen Zone.
"This year alone, the federal government will allocate almost 18 billion euros to help the federal states and municipalities to solve problems in the field of migration policy," Scholz said in an interview with Mannheimer Morgen.
He also added that too many people "are currently coming to Germany illegally." In this regard, Scholz stated the need to speed up the processing of asylum applications.