Daniel Karmann/PAP/DPA

Checks on people entering Germany to be carried out by German services already in Poland are “out of the question,” a Polish deputy interior minister has said.

Due to migration pressure, the German federal police have been conducting border controls since mid-October. The checks are carried out directly at former border crossings, but within German territory, sometimes a few kilometres from the border with Poland, causing traffic jams of many kilometres on both sides of the border.

According to Dietmar Woidke, president of the state of Brandenburg surrounding Berlin, a better option would be if such inspections were carried out by German services on Polish territory.

“What needs to be done urgently is to have the possibility of carrying out these checks already on Polish territory and move them away from the border, and with it the inconvenience associated with such checks suffered by the border region,” Woidke told a German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.

Reacting to Woidke’s words, Bartosz Grodecki, a deputy interior minister, said on Tuesday that “such a solution has not been the subject of any discussions or arrangements with the German side.”

“Moreover, for many reasons, including legal ones, it is completely out of the question,” he added.

In his opinion, border controls always slow down traffic, and potentially carrying them out on Polish territory would only move queues away from border crossings, not eliminate them.

“This is impossible. If Germans are bothered by queues near crossings, they may as well conduct inspections on their own territory,” Grodecki said.

“There is no legal basis on which the Germans could control entry into their territory on the Polish side,” he added.

The German government has introduced more checks on its border with Poland and the Czech Republic after experiencing an increased inflow of migrants.