Joachim Herrmann

Austria is considering prolonging border controls with its Schengen neighbors due to the surge in migrant arrivals, announced Interior Minister Gerhard Karner during a press conference in Vienna alongside Bavarian counterpart Joachim Herrmann.

Bulgaria's foreign affairs minister, Ekaterina Zaharieva, has once again challenged the European Union over expanding the border-free Schengen Area.

Tomorrow the Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte will be welcomed in Sofia by Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. It will be a conversation after which the last obstacle before our entry into Schengen might fall.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann announced against the adoption of Bulgaria in the Schengen zone, BNR announced. According to him, this is also the position of his Christian Social Union, the Bavarian partner of the ruling German Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Talks on forming a new German coalition government "can work", Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday ahead of a long night of negotiations at which she must forge a three-way alliance or risk seeing her 12-year stint in power come to an end, reported Reuters. 

Germany's interior and justice ministers, representing the two blocs in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition, agreed on Jan. 10 on tougher measures for asylum seekers whose documents are not in order or who are deemed to pose a security threat. 

During a meeting in Sofia on Friday, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, who is on a two-day visit to Bulgaria, vowed to enhance police cooperation.

Among the main topics of discussion were the ongoing migrant crisis in the EU and threats to security, the government's press service informs.

Germany shut down two train stations in Munich about an hour before midnight on Dec. 31 following a tip from the intelligence service of a friendly country that the Islamic State of Iraq and te Levant (ISIL) militant group was planning a suicide bomb attack.

Police in Munich evacuated two major railway stations after a “friendly intelligence agency” warned Germany of an impending ISIS attack, said Bavaria’s interior minister Joachim Herrmann.

As he said, German authorities received information that suicide bombers from Islamic State would target the central station or Pasing station.

"15,000 Serbian citizens sought asylum in Bavaria"

BERLIN -- Some 15,000 citizens of Serbia have sought asylum in Bavaria alone in the first 11 months of 2014, the German daily Welt writes.

The same article said that the state last year accepted 32,000 asylum seekers, twice as many as in 2013.