The Administrative Court in Koblenz has declared an identity check conducted on a traveler at the Luxembourg-German border to be illegal. The ruling stemmed from an incident that occurred when the plaintiff, who was traveling from Luxembourg to Saarbrücken by bus in June 2025, was subjected to an arbitrary identity check by the Federal Police at a rest stop on the A8 autobahn. He complained that the border controls violated the Schengen Border Code because the Federal Republic of Germany had not provided sufficient justification for reintroducing or extending these physical checks.
The Koblenz judges sided with the plaintiff, determining that the identity determination carried out at the border crossing was unlawful. While relevant regulations allow the Federal Police to establish a person’s identity to monitor cross-border traffic, they assert that this is only valid if the internal border controls have been reintroduced or extended in accordance with EU law. However, the court found that the extension of internal border controls at the Luxembourg-German border between March 16, 2025, and September 15, 2025, was contrary to EU law.
Specifically, Article 25 of the Schengen Border Code allows a member state to reinstate or extend physical checks only in exceptional circumstances, such as a serious threat to public order or internal security. The court concluded that the police authorities had exceeded their assessment power because they failed to base their threat assessment on solid, verifiable facts. Furthermore, they did not adequately document that the developing situation was sudden enough to warrant the required extension of controls. An appeal against this judgment has subsequently been granted by the Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate.