The Polish government of Donald Tusk has adopted a draft law that would allow the country to temporarily suspend the right to claim asylum. The prime minister said the right to asylum “is being used today—especially on the border with Belarus—by Poland’s enemies,” and that by adopting the bill “we are taking back control of Poland’s borders.”
The bill has been in the works for a while, and is intended as a response to actions of neighbouring Belarus: the country has been flying in migrants from the Middle East and Africa in recent years, and sending them to the borders of the EU—Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania—in a bid to destabilise the region. Those three EU member states have accused Russia of complicity.
The number of migrants arriving at the borders of EU member states from Belarus has increased by 66% this year, compared with 2023. In Poland, 28,000 attempted illegal crossings were recorded by the end of October. The EU says 90% of migrants illegally crossing the Poland-Belarus border have a Russian student or tourist visa.
The EU approved Poland’s request for a tougher line on immigration, saying last week that member states bordering Russia and Belarus can limit the right of asylum for migrants in the event of their “weaponisation” by Moscow and Minsk, but only under “strict conditions.”
The steps are in line with the resolutions of the European Council summit in October, during which member states demanded to be given the freedom to act against what they call “hybrid warfare.”
As we previously reported, this is a change of tune for the EU, as it punished the conservative government of Hungary for protecting its borders by outsourcing asylum claims to neighbouring countries. The EU has also refused to contribute to Hungary’s defence of its borders, which are also the EU’s external borders.
In contrast, Brussels is fully supporting the left-liberal government of Donald Tusk, and is even allocating €52 million in order to enhance the protection of its borders—a politically biased decision based on the fact that the Polish prime minister, a former European Council president, hails from European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s political family, the European People’s Party.
The draft law would allow Poland to limit the right to apply for asylum for periods of no more than 60 days, with the possibility of extending the restriction by another 60 days with parliament’s approval. The government would also need to specify the exact stretch of the border where the restriction would apply.
The bill still needs to be approved by parliament, where Tusk’s government coalition enjoys a majority. However, junior coalition member The Left has expressed reservations about the measure.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda—an ally of the opposition conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), which was in government between 2015 and 2023—previously said that Tusk and his political allies have “finally joined the defenders of the borders of Poland.” He berated the prime minister for not having supported the actions of his conservative predecessors in government, and for having opposed the construction of a border barrier.
The decision to tighten asylum laws in Poland and elsewhere comes as more and more member states come to terms with the long-term effects of illegal immigration, and to the realisation that the EU is ill-equipped to handle the migration crisis.
Finland’s parliament in July adopted legislation that would allow guards to turn away asylum seekers at the border under certain circumstances.
Conservative and right-wing forces in Europe have warned that the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact, which was adopted earlier this year with the intention of applying a common approach to migration issues, does not solve the protection of the bloc’s external borders, and only serves as a pull-factor for migrants wanting to come to Europe.
Member states have begun implementing their own policies and enabling controls on their own borders to bring a halt to illegal immigration. As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently said: eventually, every European leader will come to the same conclusion that he has been reiterating since the beginning of the migration crisis in 2015—namely, that protecting the external borders of the EU and establishing hotspots outside of the bloc for migrants to hand in their asylum requests is the only solution.
