German police union: Thousands more officers needed to patrol borders
Plans from Germany's conservative opposition leader to bring back permanent controls along the country's borders would require hiring thousands of additional police officers, the leader of the German Police Union (GdP) said on Monday.
Friedrich Merz, the head of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), included the return of permanent border checks in a legislative package aimed at cracking down on migration.
All of Germany's neighbours are members of the visa-free Schengen Area, and have not had regular border controls on any land borders for several years as a result of the Schengen agreement.
"We would certainly need 8,000 to 10,000 additional officers to comprehensively control the border," Andreas Rosskopf, head of the GdP federal police, told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
He said about 1,000 riot police are already being regularly deployed as support to the regular force at the borders, and a broader staffing reform is "absolutely essential."
Rosskopft said that Germany also lacked modern technology such as surveillance drones and vehicle licence plate scanners to properly aid officers in controlling the borders.
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