Poland: Government pushes forward on stricter migration measures

On Thursday (March 20), as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was preparing to depart for a conference in Brussels, he said during a press conference, “today I would like to make a very passionate appeal to the president to sign the bill as soon as possible, preferably today, which will allow us to temporarily suspend the right to apply for asylum,” reported the Polish news agency PAP (Polska Agencja Prasowa).

The bill, which was voted through by the Polish senate and parliament in February, is in the Polish government’s opinion a key tool for the country to protect its border with Belarus. Tusk added that “there is already a regulation in place and as soon as the president’s signature appears under the bill, the regulation will be introduced and come into force at the next cabinet meeting on Tuesday.”

Tusk is worried that the government in neighboring Belarus, led by Aleksandr Lukashenko, is planning further “hybrid attacks” on Poland and other EU countries that share a border with Belarus. According to Tusk, pressure is building again at the border.

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Bill is seen as ‘a pre-emptive move’

Polish parliamentarians who voted for the bill have said they want it passed so they can send a signal to both Russia and Belarus that Poland takes its border security seriously. Sejm speaker in Poland’s lower house of Parliament Syzmon Holownia said the bill was meant to be seen as a “pre-emptive move.”

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has also called on the Polish President to sign the bill into law. According to PAP, Kosiniak-Kamysz told reporters that “the pressure on the border has grown over the past week. The law is needed as a clear signal that the territory of the Republic of Poland is protected.”

Many Polish people feel particularly affected by the current geopolitical situation after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. If Russia were to take power in Ukraine following the cessation of the conflict, most people in Poland fear they could be one of the next countries to fall, and return to being part of the Russian sphere of influence, which they endured for over 40 years, from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until the end of the eighties.

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Suspension of right to asylum for 60 days or longer

When and if the bill is signed off by the President, a halt in the right to apply for asylum “can be implemented at the request of the interior minister for a maximum of 60 days, with the possibility of its extension for a limited time,” reported PAP.

On March 17, a week after the law was approved by the Polish Senate, a coalition of 29 Polish NGOs, led by ECRE member organization the Ocalenie Foundation, sent an appeal to President Duda urging him to veto it.

Another human rights organization, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, also criticized the bill, saying it contradicted both Polish law as well as international agreements. The German pro-migrant association Pro Asyl said the bill represented “a dangerous development for the rule of law in Europe,” cited ECRE in a briefing note.

Sarah Red from the organization Oxfam said that she believed Poland had “abandoned its commitments to the rule of law and protecting people fleeing war and persecution,” and replaced EU law with “razor wire, torture and violence.”

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Council of Europe raises questions

The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, also wrote a letter on March 4, to the Polish senate ahead of the vote on March 13 in which he said: “the proposed amendments restricting access to asylum procedures raise serious questions about their compatibility with Council of Europe human rights standards, especially those enshrined in Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

O’Flaherty said that while he acknowledged there was a possibility that migrants were being instrumentalized by Belarus and Russia, he feared that the proposed amendments “may lead to situations where individuals are denied the opportunity to present their claims, exposing them to potential treatment contrary to the refoulement prohibition in the state to which they are returned.”

In response, the Marshal for the Senate in Poland, Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, said on March 10 that the act would be “analyzed in depth from the perspectives outlined in your letter.” She added that it was “our collective responsibility to ensure that human rights standards are upheld.”

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Poland’s Belarus border fence: A controversial deterrent

Extension of the exclusion zone

In February and March, the Polish government has been gradually implementing various measures designed to toughen its migration policy. On March 10, the Polish government extended once again the exclusion zone around the Belarus border.

According to an ECRE briefing note published on March 20, the zone is located along a 60-kilometer stretch of the border between Poland and Belarus and was introduced by the current government in June 2024, and subsequently extended twice, first in September 2024, and then in December.

The latest extension will last for an additional 90 days. According to ECRE, Polish authorities claim this exclusion zone is working because there has been a 46 percent decrease in the number of attempts to cross the Belarus-Poland border since its introduction.

The Polish authorities also say that having the exclusion zone in place helps protect Polish border guards working in a densely forested and marshy area. Last year, a Polish soldier was stabbed through the fence and died later in hospital.

Critics of the zone, including NGOs working with migrant rights in the area, say that it prevents migrants from receiving humanitarian assistance, including water, food, medical care and legal support.

The operation of the exclusion zone also means that it is difficult to report on what is happening in that zone. One of the few sources are reports published by the authorities themselves, such as a post from the Polish Border Guard on X from March 21 saying that “almost 70 attempts to illegally enter the country” were recorded and “almost all of them were thwarted.” Three people were arrested.

Two days before, on March 19, the border guard says it recorded 135 such attempts, and “almost all of them were thwarted.” On that day there were five arrested for “aiding and abetting” the migrants. Stones and branches were thrown at two patrols, stated the border guard.

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Block on implementing pact if it includes ‘solidarity mechanism’

Since the beginning of March, the Polish government has reiterated its opposition to implementing the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. This is mainly because the country objects to the principle encouraged by the pact of ‘solidarity’ which involves receiving relocated migrants from other EU states, mostly ‘frontline’ states like Italy, Greece and Spain.

On February 4, Tusk declared: “Poland will not implement any migration pact or any provision of such projects that would lead to Poland’s forced acceptance of migrants. This is definitive,” reported the English language website Notes from Poland.

A month later, on March 5, a similar sentiment was repeated by Poland’s Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak, when he said implementation of the pact “was not possible.” On March 10, a spokesperson for the European Commission stated that legal action would be taken against countries that failed to comply with the pact.

Despite this, on March 17, Siemoniak told Euronews that Poland’s “consent to this will not be given.” He added, reported Euronews, “We are not saying no because no, we are saying that Poland took in one million refugees from Ukraine during the war, and this means a certain financial cost for our state.”