A court in Munich ruled on Thursday that German border checks were unlawful in three individual cases, citing concerns over the prolonged duration of controls at the Austrian-German border and their compatibility with revised rules governing the Schengen visa-free travel area, but rejected a request to halt future checks.
The administrative court said a key consideration was that the checks, particularly on the border with Austria, had remained effectively unchanged for years despite the updated legal framework governing the Schengen area.
The Schengen agreement, which set up an area in Europe where border checks are no longer carried out, includes 25 EU member states and four non-EU countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Three men had sued the federal government over the checks. The written reasoning for the rulings is to be delivered within a few weeks.
Injunction against border checks rejected
The court, however, rejected an emergency application by Munich resident Werner Schroeder - who regularly commutes to the Austrian city of Innsbruck - seeking to prevent future checks.
A court spokesman said citizens generally have to tolerate state measures initially and may only seek a subsequent ruling on their legality. Interim legal protection is available only in exceptional cases involving the threat of serious and irreparable harm, the court said.
However, it noted that an appeal to the Bavarian Administrative Court of Appeal is possible.
Plaintiffs allege racial profiling and arbitrariness
The three plaintiffs went to court after being subjected to checks in 2025.
Schroeder, who teaches at the Institute for European Law and Public International Law at the University of Innsbruck, travels by train from Munich to Austria at least once a week or more frequently. In 2025 he was checked and his bag searched, which he said was a violation of European law.
Systematic internal border checks violated the requirements of the Schengen Border Code, he said. "The question is, how many unlawful acts must one endure?"
A Nigerian national also brought a case, alleging racial profiling and saying he believed he had been targeted during a train journey primarily because of his skin colour.
He was the only passenger in his compartment to be asked to show his papers in July 2025, according to the Society for Civil Rights (GFF), which supported him and Schroeder.
Austrian lawyer Hubert Niedermayr was the third plaintiff.
Niedermayr said he had been subjected to checks on multiple occasions in the Rosenheim border area. He feared "that existing law is actually being deliberately violated," the lawyer said. "This is ultimately political arbitrariness, and we cannot tolerate it."
Germany reintroduced checks at all of its land borders on September 16, 2024, in an effort to curb irregular migration. The controls have since been extended three times, most recently until mid-September 2026.
Bavarian courts have previously ruled that border checks were unlawful in individual cases. The Bavarian Administrative Court of Appeal also found that the Interior Ministry had failed to provide sufficient justification for extending the measures.
Under European law, a new and serious threat is required to prolong border controls, rather than merely citing a continuing high level of secondary migration, the court held.
In practice, however, those rulings have had little impact on border operations.
