Olaf Scholz’s rejection of Angela Merkel’s open borders policy is now complete but it comes too late to stop him from losing the chancellorship of Germany.

Imposing temporary controls at all of Germany’s borders has only strengthened opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the centre-Right CDU before federal elections next September.

He already looks like a chancellor-in-waiting and has been polling far stronger than Mr Scholz’s SPD and his warring coalition partners.

After claiming credit for the new policy, Mr Merz warned his hapless rival he needed to do much more.

Mr Merz has long since disowned the legacy of Mrs Merkel, a CDU chancellor for 16 years, who threw open the borders to more than a million Syrians crossing Europe.

That move, during the 2015 migrant crisis, saved the EU’s Schengen zone policy of passport-free movement.

It came when many member states were reintroducing border controls to deal with the biggest movement of displaced people on the Continent since the Second World War.

In 2021, the centre-Left Mr Scholz, Mrs Merkel’s vice chancellor in a coalition government, won the first election to be held following her resignation, after he campaigned as a “Merkel 2.0”.

Since then, her policies on Russia and immigration have been discredited in a country which has taken in a million Ukrainian refugees in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Cosplaying politicians

In June, Mr Scholz led his SPD to their worst-ever nationwide election results in the European elections, which they lost to the CDU and Alternative for Germany (AfD.)

Immigration was the voters’ main concern but Mr Scholz did not take significant action until after a migrant was arrested as a suspect in the terror attack in Solingen in late August.

A week after the knifeman’s rampage, the AfD won state elections in Thuringia and just missed out on victory in Saxony in the best results for the far-Right in Germany since Adolf Hitler.

Immigration is also the primary concern of voters in the state of Brandenburg, which is set to hold elections in two weeks.

Liberal modern Germany, which prides itself on being a good EU member state, will not propel the extremist and Eurosceptic AfD to national power.

However, voters do not want cosplaying politicians when they can have the real thing, and Mr Merz, who has called for a Rwanda-style plan for Germany, is far more credible on migration than the dithering chancellor.

Symbolic blow

Mr Scholz’s apologists are keen to play down the importance of the new, temporary Schengen controls and stress they are in line with EU law.

Some controls were already in place at German borders with, for example, the Czech Republic. They are “smart controls” in the form of intelligence-led spot checks rather than fully-fledged border posts.

What Berlin does matters in Europe. Germany is the EU’s richest member state. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, is a former CDU minister.

The new controls are at the borders with France, Luxembourg, Denmark and the Netherlands.

These are long-standing Western member states and mostly founder members of the EU and Schengen, unlike Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and non-EU Switzerland, where there are already checks.

This is not the death of the Schengen zone but it is a symbolic blow to one of the EU’s most cherished achievements.

Migration is hugely divisive at EU level and the risk of copycat moves in other member states is real, which could put Schengen under more pressure.

Opportunity for Starmer

Austria has already warned it will not take back any migrants turned away from Germany. 

Germany is not alone.

Michel Barnier, France’s new prime minister, whose job hangs on the tacit support of Marine Le Pen’s hard-Right National Rally, has promised to take tougher action on illegal immigration.

Sir Keir Starmer can exploit this to get a deal to help stop the boats as part of his post-Brexit reboot of relations with the EU.

The tougher mood in the bloc’s two most influential countries will make it more difficult to get an EU-wide migrant returns deal but that was always going to be very difficult.

However, it could help the Prime Minister get Berlin and Paris on board with his efforts to agree a new security pact with the EU, including pledges to drive down illegal migration.