By IRNA
Berlin : A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry here Friday stressed there had been no “significant rise” in the number of illegal entries after the recent official lifting of borders between Germany and its eastern European Union neighbors, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Addressing a weekly government press briefing, Mattthias Wolf said according to statistics released by the Federal Police, there had been 425 cases of illegal entries for the period between December 21 and January 9.
“There has been no significant increase,” the spokesperson added, refuting a report in the Bild newspaper which claimed that 614 people had entered Germany illegally.
Bild added the figure for the first half of 2007, before Poland and the Czech Republic joined the Schengen zone, stood at 484.
Wolf said more people were being caught because police had boosted patrols in the border region since border checks were halted.
Most of those caught over the past three weeks were Chechens and people who had requested asylum in Poland and the Czech Republic, the spokesman added.
All those caught as asylum-seekers in Poland and the Czech Republic were later repatriated to those countries, Wolf pointed out.