EU faces migration rebellion as Poland vows to block asylum-seekers

Poland’s government aims to temporarily suspend the right of arrivals to claim asylum even though that clashes with both international law and European Union rules — but Prime Minister Donald Tusk insists he will not backtrack.

“It is our right and our duty to protect the Polish and European border. Its security will not be negotiated. With anyone,” Tusk said on social media on Monday afternoon.

Tusk, a former president of the European Council and a key leader in the center-right European People’s Party that also includes European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is reflecting a harsher tone on migration sweeping the Continent.

A tough border policy is also part of Tusk’s effort to ensure that his Civic Coalition party is in pole position to win next year’s presidential election. Polish voters are increasingly skeptical about receiving migrants — especially from non-European countries.

Over the last three years, Poland has seen thousands of people trying to cross its heavily forested border with Belarus. They have been encouraged to fly to Minsk by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, and are then directed by Belarusian authorities toward the border with Poland as well as Lithuania.

Polish authorities call Lukashenko’s tactic “weaponizing” migration as a way of harming the EU and helping his Russian ally, while von der Leyen has denounced what she called a “cruel form of hybrid threat.”

Tusk said at least 26,000 people, largely from the Middle East and Africa, crossed over from Belarus this year alone. That’s also prompted Germany to impose border restrictions of its own, complaining about migrants moving west after crossing into the EU.

The Polish government announced Saturday it would move to suspend the rights of new arrivals to claim asylum.

Brussels warned that is almost certainly incompatible with bloc-wide rules. The Commission told POLITICO that member countries must deal with “hybrid attacks” from Belarus and Russia “without compromising on our values.”

Tusk, however, insists he’s only following the lead of other countries. 

“The temporary suspension of asylum applications was introduced in Finland in May. It is a response to the hybrid war declared against the entire European Union (primarily Poland) by the regimes in Moscow and Minsk, which involves organizing mass transfers of people across our borders,” Tusk wrote online.

In November, Finland temporarily closed its border with Russia and refused to process new applications after groups of would-be asylum-seekers tried to enter. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia subsequently told POLITICO they were leaving open the option of following suit if they too faced the same tactics.

Warsaw is aware it is treading a fine line with the new restrictions.

“We need to find a balance between what is being proposed in the context of border protection and what arises from international obligations,” Justice Minister Adam Bodnar told radio TOK FM Monday.

Break with Brussels

Migration is an increasingly potent political issue and one of the reasons for a surge in support for far-right or populist parties across the Continent. They charge that the bloc’s traditional approach has left the doors wide open to people abusing the system.

In response, the Commission in June presented a new package of measures on migration, designed to increase the powers of member countries to return those ineligible to stay in the bloc and introduce a “permanent, legally-binding, but flexible solidarity mechanism to ensure that no EU country is left alone when under pressure.”

But countries bordering Russia and Belarus worry that those measures are still too timid to deter Lukashenko and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“The current migration rules do not solve the security challenge that we can see, for example, on the eastern border of the EU,” said a diplomat from one of the countries affected, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “It is not the enemies of the EU that should decide who enters our territory.”

According to the diplomat, a meeting of EU leaders at a European Council this week should be used for “an honest discussion to clearly identify and understand the new types of risks. And then we should talk about EU-wide solutions.”

Domestic politics

Tusk’s move is causing dismay among human rights groups and creating tensions within his governing coalition.

“We would like to remind Prime Minister Donald Tusk that the right to asylum is a human right. Groundless suspension of this right, even temporarily, is unacceptable and is in conflict with, among others, the Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Amnesty International’s Polish office said on X on Saturday.

Szymon Hołownia, the speaker of parliament and leader of the Poland 2050 party that is part of the coalition, issued a careful statement calling asylum a “sacred right” but also noting it could be suspended “during a state of emergency or martial law and under the ongoing supervision of the parliament.”

When he was in opposition, Tusk and his allies frequently criticized the former nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party government for building a barrier along the border with Belarus and for pushing back migrants rather than hearing their asylum claims.

Human rights groups said that was illegal and left people to die in remote forests and bogs because Belarus often refused to allow them back into its own territory.

But once in power, Tusk has taken a much harder line on the border issue.

“Tusk appears to be driven by a desire to avoid getting defeated by PiS on the migration front,” said Jakub Jaraczewski of Democracy Reporting, a Berlin-based NGO.

While initial reports of refugees seeking asylum in Poland aroused sympathy, especially among human rights groups and those on the political left, attitudes have hardened in recent years as Lukashenko shows no sign of stopping his migration policy.

According to a June poll carried out by Opinia24, Poles remain fairly open to culturally similar Belarusians or Ukrainians but only 14 percent would be happy with an influx of other nationals.

“Tusk has to show the voters that he is tough,” said Grzegorz Kuczyński, an expert on Eastern Europe with the Warsaw Institute think tank. “The previous Polish government built a barrier and sent police and military there. The current government is continuing this policy, despite having criticized it while in opposition.”

“Poles mostly support a tough immigration policy,” he added. “That is why [Tusk] has taken this position. In this way, he is taking away one of the main arguments of the opposition.”

Gabriel Gavin reported from Brussels. Wojciech Kość reported from Warsaw.