On the bridge over the Neisse river separating the small Polish town of Gubin from its German counterpart Guben, German police officers can now be found periodically flagging down and inspecting cars.
Nevertheless, traffic over the bridge remains largely fluid, with police allowing most cars to pass while stopping larger vehicles.
Similar checks can be witnessed at several points along the Polish-German border.
The checks are aimed at enforcing Berlin's new policy of pushing back anyone trying to enter the country without the necessary documents, including most asylum seekers.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz views a tougher immigration policy as an integral part of stemming the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which scored its best-ever result of over 20 percent in February's vote, according to AFP.
Germany was shaken in the months leading up to the vote by a string of violent attacks blamed on foreign-born suspects.
Even though Merz's government was at pains to say the new checks would not be an inconvenience to its neighbours, Poland was quick to express its irritation, urging Berlin to instead "concentrate on the EU's external borders".
For Gubin residents, many of which cross every day to their jobs in Germany, this brings back old memories of the Iron Curtain times when travel between the two countries was not as easy.
Guben and Gubin, which have around 15,000 inhabitants each, used to be a single town but were divided by the German-Polish border put in place along the Neisse river after World War II.
After Poland's entry into the Schengen open-borders zone in December 2007, the checks disappeared.
But in recent years the principle of a borderless Europe has come under strain, with controls being re-established during the Covid-19 pandemic to prevent infection, and also being used by governments to combat irregular migration.
(mo)
Source: AFP