End of Czech-Slovak border controls

Controls on the Czech-Slovak border, which Czechia introduced last September due to a sharp increase in the number of migrants heading to Western Europe via Slovakia and the Czech Republic, have ended as of Sunday. It is now possible for tourists to freely cross the land border once again, which, although Czechia and Slovakia are both part of the Schengen area, was not possible when the border controls were in place.

However, checks on trains on the Slovak side of the border will continue, and police officers will continue to surveil the border area on and off the roads at random.

When the controls were at their height, soldiers and customs officers were employed to help. However, the situation has since improved, and the government therefore gradually reduced the number of checks and has now cancelled them altogether. According to Interior Minister Vít Rakušan, the police were catching 400 migrants a day last September, while now it is often just individual people. The vast majority, 93 percent, of migrants detained last year were Syrians, mostly young men.

Since the controls were introduced last September, the police have checked a total of 3.2 million people crossing the border, detained 9,660 illegal migrants and 142 people suspected of smuggling, and denied entry to 2,636 people.

The government has used up four months of the six-month period during which Schengen countries can decide to use temporary border controls.