Another EU state reintroduces immigration controls
Poland has decided to temporarily reintroduce border controls along its frontiers with Germany and Lithuania to stop the flow of illegal migrants. All three nations are part of the Schengen Area, which allows free travel across most of the bloc.
The EU has been grappling with a refugee crisis since at least 2015, largely caused by upheavals in the Middle East and Africa, and later by the Ukraine conflict. Warsaw has previously accused German police of “dumping” thousands of migrants back across the Polish border. Some activists have organized self-styled ‘citizen border patrols’ along the German frontier.
“We remain advocates for freedom of movement in Europe, but only on condition that there is the shared will of all neighbors… to minimize the uncontrolled flow of migrants across our borders,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He stated that temporary border controls would similarly be implemented on Poland’s border with Lithuania.
In 2023, neighboring Germany, the EU’s top destination for asylum seekers, introduced temporary controls on its borders with Poland and the Czech Republic to stem the flow. Most of the people entering Poland travel on to western Europe, where benefits for asylum seekers are more generous. Berlin has since repeatedly renewed the controls.
Under the Schengen agreement, participant nations are allowed to temporarily reintroduce border controls in emergency situations, with the Covid-19 outbreak having been one recent instance.
Tighter national migration and border control policies could lead to the destruction of the EU, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned in May.
Commenting on the restoration of control on the Polish-Lithuanian border, Tusk accused the Baltic state, as well as neighboring Latvia, of having lax border controls. The lapses have supposedly allowed illegal migrants to cross over from non-EU Belarus, and subsequently to enter Poland.
Since 2021, Warsaw has accused Minsk and Moscow of deliberately orchestrating the flow of illegal migrants into EU states. Russia and Belarus have denied the allegations.
