Berlin plans to overhaul security after attack

GERMANY’S interior minister on Tuesday outlined plans for a security services overhaul, seeking greater federal powers on domestic intelligence and quicker expulsions of illegal migrants after the Berlin truck attack.

Thomas de Maiziere also wants federal police to be given wider oversight across the country’s 16 states, and for a new national crisis management centre to be set up.

“We don’t have federal jurisdiction to deal with national catastrophes. The jurisdiction for the fight against international terrorism is fragmented,” he wrote in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “The federal police’s scope of action is restricted to railway stations, airports and border controls,” he wrote, stressing “it is time” to re-examine Germany’s security set-up.

Policing and domestic intelligence services in Germany are currently decentralised, with responsibilities split between the federal and state governments.

De Maiziere also said federal detention centres should be set up to hold rejected asylum seekers in the period leading up to their expulsion. In order to close security gaps, federal police must be given wider powers, the minister said.

“The current remit of the federal police is too limited,” he said. “We need a set of common rules and better coordination, for instance in checking dangerous individuals.”

The federal government should also take charge of domestic intelligence services, he said, noting that troublemakers do not seek to disrupt only one state but the country as a whole.