EU warns Poland over bombshell plan to suspend asylum claims
We can defend against Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko weaponizing migrants without "compromising on our values," Brussels tells Warsaw.
Poland’s controversial new plans to turn away migrants at the border with Belarus risk breaching the country’s human rights obligations, the EU warned Monday morning.
Under the Polish proposal announced Saturday by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Warsaw will introduce a new migration strategy including “the temporary territorial suspension of the right to asylum.”
A spokesperson for the European Commission told POLITICO that member countries “have international and EU obligations, including the obligation to provide access to the asylum procedure.”
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, one of Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, has actively encouraged would-be asylum-seekers to come to the country, where his security forces help deliver them to the Polish border and refuse to allow them to turn back.
It is unclear at which parts of the Polish border Tusk’s measure would apply, or how it would comply with international humanitarian law.
The Commission spokesperson added: “We need to work towards a European solution — one that holds strong against the hybrid attacks from Putin and Lukashenko, without compromising on our values.”
The spokesperson said the burgeoning crisis — which has seen at least 26,000 people from the Middle East and Africa cross over into Poland this year alone — shows that “we cannot allow Russia and Belarus to use our own values, including the right to asylum, against us and undermine our democracies.”
The European Commission has strongly opposed Budapest when it made similar proposals to Warsaw, leading Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to threaten to bus refugees to Brussels.
What's Your Reaction?
