The Polish government has issued an order suspending the right to claim asylum for people who cross the border from Belarus.
The move comes on the heels of a law signed by President Andrzej Duda only a day earlier which allows the government to temporarily limit asylum rights.
“I believe that it is necessary to strengthen the security of our borders and the security of Poles,” Duda said.
Prezydent @AndrzejDuda: Zdecydowałem dziś, że tzw. ustawa azylowa wejdzie w życie. Podpisałem ją, bo uważam, że jest potrzebna dla umacniania bezpieczeństwa naszych granic. Zachęcam Premiera do podejmowania aktywnych działań w kwestii bezpieczeństwa Polski.
— Kancelaria Prezydenta (@prezydentpl) March 26, 2025
Najważniejsze jest…
The bill, pushed through parliament by Donald Tusk’s left-liberal cabinet, 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.
In total, 30,090 attempted crossings from Belarus to Poland were recorded across the whole of 2024. That was 16% more than the 26,000 recorded in 2023.
“The regulation gives border guard officers a key tool to combat illegal migration, which is an element of hybrid aggression against Poland, and to combat international crime,” said interior minister Tomasz Siemoniak.
This comes as a surprise after Tusk’s lack of support for anti-immigration initiatives during the era of the PiS-government, politicians from the opposition conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party reminded.
On Wednesday, in a letter to the prime minister, President Andrzej Duda called on Tusk to clarify what actions his government was taking to oppose returns of asylum seekers and other migrants to Poland from Germany.
Mateusz Morawiecki warned that Germany recently opened a deportation centre near the borders of Poland, and will start sending back migrants who had supposedly first sought asylum in Poland. “Poland’s borders should be tight, patrolled and protected—not only in the east, but also in the west!” he tweeted.
The asylum suspension order issued on Wednesday will last for sixty days. If the government wishes to extend the ban, it must seek the approval of parliament.
Children, pregnant women, and those in need of specialised medical care are exempt from the ban.
The EU last year approved Poland’s request to limit the right of asylum for migrants in the event of their “weaponisation” by Moscow and Minsk, but only under “strict conditions.”
The decision was a clear appeasement of Donald Tusk, a darling of the liberal elites in Brussels. In contrast, the EU has punished the conservative government of Hungary for basically doing the same thing: rejecting illegal migrants at the border.
Tusk has been trying to sound tough on migration, and has promised not to accept migrants under the relocation scheme of the EU’s Migration Pact.
However, former conservative prime minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, previously said that Tusk’s “heroic” stance against the Pact will end as soon as the upcoming presidential elections are over.
