Poland wants to stop asylum rights

Translated by Irene Cecchi

The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that Poland would stop processing asylum applications starting on October 15th 2024. The government took this decision in order to improve security against Russian and Belarusian strategies to destabilize the Country through migration flows. The European Union didn’t approve this measure.

Migration flows in Poland

Poland always had a hard time managing migration flows and this is why it was often heavily criticized by the EU and human rights’ advocacy groups. After being an emigration country for long, in the last ten years Poland became a destination for many migrants, with 2.5 million foreigners living there long-term. However, Poland proved to be very skeptical when accepting migrants coming from a different cultural background, also due to the fact that the population is very homogeneous and find it difficult to be open to who is “different”. In fact, Poland, along with Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary (that create the so called Visegrad group), often clash with European directives regarding migration, as shown with the negative vote against the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. This pact, in discussion phase since 2020, aims to create some kind of “solidarity web” to hinder possible migration crises that may compromise European stability, as happened in 2015. The same Pact was heavily criticized by activists. So, despite the Polish government's closure regarding the arrival of a culturally diverse population, the Country proves to be welcoming with people they consider alike. In defiance of this attitude, Poland is the European Country that has hosted more Ukrainian refugees since the Russian invasion in 2022.

The 2021 migration crisis

Despite being on the border, Poland never had to process a huge amount of asylum applications like Southern Countries, but since 2021 Varsaw ended up in a new and unexpected crisis: asylum seekers from the Middle East, like Syria, Afghanistan and Kurdish Iraq, are getting in through the Belarus border. Despite the peak reached in 2021 and the attempt of hindering the flow by building a wall along the Belarus border, this new route was never closed. Poland and the EU believe this new route is part of a hybrid war strategy backed by Belarus and Russia to undermine European stability. Minsk keeps releasing visas to those who want to flee their country promising them a way to Europe. Once in Belarus, the authorities bring them to the Polish border, where they will be pushed away. Some NGOs are denouncing Polish authorities for refusing to process asylum applications and sanding people back to Belarus. Here, they often find themselves in inhumane conditions just to be bright again to the Polish border, in a never-ending spiral. Both Countries had been accused by NGOs not to respect international law.

The government’s measures and the criticism

In 202, Poland was governed by a right-wing party and the Prime Minister was Mateusz Morawiecki, from the nationalist Law and Justice party, who proved to be against migrants’ hosting on several occasions. This is why he strengthened Belarus border control and made it harder for NGO to help asylum seekers, in order to hinder their arrival. Many activists heavily criticized this mistreatment, and also the current Prime Minister Donald Tusk, from the centric Civil Platform party (KO), but once in power he didn’t stop it, quite the contrary. In June 2024, after a soldier was killed by a migrant, Tusk introduced the “red area”, a corridor along the Belarus border where it is forbidden to provide aid. In October, he decided to stop processing asylum applications aiming to put an end to the flow from Belarus. In fact, Tusk believes that Russia and Belarus are using migration as a weapon against Poland and the whole EU. Considering the high level of conservatism in Poland this may be a political move to ensure this fringe’s votes before the Presidential Elections due in June 2025. Anyways, it’s still not clear how these measures will be put in place since it is against the Polish constitution and international law, as some local and international NGOs pointed out, such as Grupa Granica, Amnesty International and the same EU. In fact, the European Commission took a stand against this proposal since it’s not in accordance with international law and the non-refoulement principle, the one that forbids repatriation to an unsafe country. The EU prefers to sign agreements with third countries to stop illegal routes to Europe but actually, also this approach is not that compatible with asylum seekers’ rights.

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