Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in recent days unilaterally suspended the right to asylum for migrants crossing into Poland from neighboring Belarus. Tusk said the move is temporary, meant to stop Russia from directing flows of migrants towards Poland in an effort to destabilize the country. In recent years, Poland and Belarus have nearly come to blows over the issue.
The decision, which has raised concerns among human rights groups, comes just before a major EU summit focused in part on crafting a coherent migration policy that balances the bloc’s supranational human rights laws with national-level concerns about rapid immigration from the Global South. In recent weeks, Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, imposed fresh border checks of its own.
Note: Tusk is no ultra-nationalist. A centrist former European Council president, Tusk was elected last year on a wave of discontent with the long-ruling, far-right Law and Justice party. But in Poland – as elsewhere in the decade since a wave of refugees from the Syrian civil war arrived – calls for tighter immigration policy have moved from the right-wing fringe to the mainstream discourse.
All of this as the numbers are actually falling. Illegal crossings detected by EU border authorities fell 42% in the first nine months of 2024, compared to the same period last year, authorities say. Migrant voyages via the Mediterranean fell drastically, but they in fact rose along eastern routes into the Czech Republic and Poland.
Looking ahead: EU leaders will meet to discuss the issue on Wednesday and Thursday.
