On their journey to Germany, some migrants also choose to go via Switzerland. According to media reports, coming from Austria they have it quite easy: the Swiss railway transports them directly to Basel. The Union is outraged.
Switzerland is sending hundreds of incoming migrants who want to travel to other countries on to Basel, on the border with Germany and France. The police in the canton of St. Gallen confirmed the practice to the newspaper “NZZ am Sonntag”: “We formally allow onward travel.” Now comes criticism from Germany. “If these reports are correct, Switzerland will just wave it through,” said Union parliamentary group leader Andrea Lindholz of the newspaper. “National egoism is damaging the Schengen area.”
The Swiss TV magazine “Rundschau” showed at the beginning of October that the Swiss railway SBB provides migrants who arrive from Austria in Buchs in the canton of St. Gallen with their own wagons for the onward journey via Zurich to Basel. For Lindholz, the SBB are thus promoting illegal entry into Germany. She called for the Swiss authorities to intervene. “Switzerland must fulfill its obligations as a member of the Schengen area and take action against illegal migration.”
The Swiss State Secretariat for Migration sees no legal basis for detaining people. And before a Dublin procedure is through, which is intended to determine which country is responsible for carrying out an asylum procedure, the people have traveled farther a long time. “No Dublin procedure can be carried out for people who are no longer present,” the spokesman for the State Secretariat for Migration told the newspaper.
The professor of migration law, Sarah Progin-Theuerkauf, described the forwarding of the migrants in the Rundschau program as “a violation of the law, and that is not compatible with the Dublin Agreement”. Because an asylum procedure must be carried out in the country into which a refugee demonstrably first entered. Another professor of migration law, Alberto Achermann, sees things differently: “Dublin only comes into play when a person applies for asylum,” he told the “NZZ am Sonntag”. The migrants who arrive in Buchs usually don’t do that.
