Poland bring back controls on its borders with Germany, Lithuania - Tusk
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that Poland will temporarily reinstate controls on the country’s borders with Germany and Lithuania due to the spike in illegal migration in said regions.
"We made the decision to bring back temporary controls on Poland's borders with Germany and Lithuania. This decision was made today. Due to organisational reasons, it will come into force on Monday, July 7. Until that time, appropriate services, above all the Border Guard, have been obligated to logistically prepare for this operation," Tusk said during Tuesday's press conference.
He added that these security measures had been in the works for some time now, but now they will be intensified. Once the regulation is in place, military units will support the Border Guard in this operation.
According to Tusk, services will patrol not only border crossings, but also the green border between Poland and Lithuania. Those people attempting to enter Poland illegally will be detained and returned to the other side of the border they had breached.
The regulation bringing about all these changes is reportedly being drawn up by the interior ministry.
Tusk also said that Poland "received some information" that Germany was planning to prolong the controls performed by German services, which were supposed to end in September.
"The response from our side will be symmetrical," he said. "The time of Poland not responding adequately to this sort of actions has ended."
He also announced that "everyone involved in this process will do everything in their power to minimise negative consequences for ordinary citizens, to try to avoid them altogether."
"We will firmly and diplomatically demand changes which will allow for these controls to not go on for too long," he added.
Later on Tuesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a press conference that Germany and Poland maintained close cooperation on border controls.
Merz refuted a claim reiterated by some media that Germany was returning asylum seekers from its territory to Poland. "There are no such cases," he said.
He said that Germany was discussing with Poland ways to curb the illegal immigration pressure to the minimum as well as the adverse effects of checks on the Polish-German border. "We have a common issue that we want to solve," he said, adding that he had already spoken about the problem with Tusk at the EU and the NATO summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, last week.
The Baltic States' news agency BNS reported on Tuesday that in reaction to Poland's decision, Lithuanian Interior Minister Vladislav Kondratovic said that the country was intensifying its fight against so-called secondary migration, whereby individuals claim asylum in countries other than the ones in which they were initially seeking refuge.
Since October 2023, Germany has maintained controls on its border with Poland to reduce illegal migration, while right-wing media and politicians in Poland have recently intensified claims that Germany may be sending illegal migrants to Poland.
Such reports have spurred some right-wing groups to organise so-called Civic Guard units, which 'patrol' the border crossings with Germany looking for attempts to enter Poland by illegal migrants. (PAP)
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