Border controls have come to an end. Neither German nor Luxembourgish officials are monitoring the border as of Saturday morning. According to internal critics at customs, however, the participation of Luxembourgish officials in the control was not entirely legal.
Customs officials did carry out exit checks in Vianden and Dosbourg. Anyone who could not give a valid reason was turned away, but not before officials made a note of their name and registration plate.
According to the president of the customs union, Lynn Luciani, this procedure was not legal: “This question came up immediately after our people had been ordered to the border. We also passed this question on to the administration, but we did not receive a satisfying answer. They referred to a law from 9 June 1994, but this law deals with entirely different matters.” The law deals with restrictions on admission which customs can carry out in exceptional cases.
Luciani continues: “Technically the Schengen agreement would have to be suspended in order to impose restrictions on admission into Luxembourg. This admission is also clearly defined in article 2, specifically that it can only be imposed under very specific circumstances. In this case, this article is clearly not being followed.”
The customs union stated that they could not see which legal basis the recent decisions to participate in German border controls referred to. There had also been no clear instructions for customs officials on site.
The officials collected data from individuals, but what’s happening to this data? “As far as we know there are registers that are being kept, but we do not know why,” explains Luciani.
According to internal sources, there are also other discrepancies, namely during logging of people who did not keep the mandatory distance of 2 metres on their private property. The lockdown law from 18 March states that fines may only be issued when the incident occurred “in public space”. The ministry responsible for customs, the Ministry of Finance, is however not aware of any such incidents.
Upon enquiry, the ministry preferred not to comment on the criticism regarding border controls.
