WARSAW - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced the adoption of the government's long-term strategy "Regaining Control, Ensuring Security", which aims to regain full control over migration and to reduce as much as possible the illegal crossing of Poland's borders. He will unveil it on Tuesday, one year on from the election that brought his party to power. Because of the situation on the border with Belarus, he wants to temporarily suspend the right to asylum as part of this strategy and ask the European Union to approve the measure. Warsaw accuses Minsk of encouraging and helping migrants to cross the Polish border.
"We will not respect or apply any European idea that (...) undermines our security. I am referring to the migration pact and the context of immigration," said Tusk, who also used to be president of the European Council.
"We want people to come to Poland who will work here honestly, study, pay taxes and integrate into Polish society. These are people who deserve respect and esteem. They must accept Polish norms and customs," Tusk said. He said the state is obliged to keep illegal migration in Poland to a minimum and regain full control over who comes, why they come and how they can be useful.
The prime minister was speaking in Warsaw at a congress of the Civic Platform, the largest party in Poland's coalition government. "We have a big book of negative experiences from Western countries. They have attracted a lot of immigrants. At some point they overlooked the integration aspect there," He added.
Migration has been an important issue in Poland since 2021, when a large number of people, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, started crossing the border with Belarus illegally. At the time, Warsaw and the European Union blamed Minsk and its allies Russia for the crisis. These countries have denied blame. Poland forms the external border of the European Union and the Schengen area. According to the Polish defence minister, pressure on the Polish-Belarusian border has increased, with more attempts at illegal crossings and incidents of violence on both sides.
"We need to regain 100% control over who comes to Poland," Tusk stressed. According to the Prime Minister, one of the elements of the migration strategy will be "temporary territorial suspension of the right to asylum." Tusk said the right to asylum is being abused. "This is because we know very well how it is used (by Belarusian President Alexandemr) Lukashenko, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, smugglers and human traffickers, how this right to asylum is being abused precisely against its essence," said the Polish Prime Minister.
Since taking office as prime minister last December, Liberal Tusk has been pushing for a tough policy on migration, a strategy that has won widespread public support. But it has worried activists who hoped the new prime minister would abandon the approach of the previous nationalist government. In July, the Polish parliament passed a law making it easier for security forces to use weapons against migrants on the border with Belarus.
According to Onet.pl, the founder of the humanitarian organization Polish Humanitarian Action criticized the prime minister's plan Janina Ochojská . "If the Prime Minister announces something like this, it means that he is also suspending the Geneva Convention, the Human Rights Convention and many other conventions and rights. Does that mean that they will not apply in Poland?" asks Ochojská, who is also a former member of the European Parliament.
Other NGOs also joined in the criticism. "I have never considered Donald Tusk a champion of human rights, but this is a new low," said Małgorzata Szulekaová, a member of the board of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (HFHR). "There is a humanitarian crisis at the border, but it is also an open migration route. We need to find space for a sensible discussion that is not so populist," She added.
Marysia Zlonkiewicz from Grupa Granica, an organization that helps migrants at the border, called the suspension of the right to asylum an unconstitutional step that will drive migrants into the hands of human smugglers. "Prime Minister Donald Tusk is violating the constitution he has pledged to defend," she said.
The topic of migration was also discussed at a joint meeting of the Polish and Czech governments in Prague on 9 October. The two cabinets jointly called for a tougher European migration policy and advocated a "stricter and different version of the EU migration pact", which is due to enter into force in 2026. They called for better protection of the EU's external borders, while criticising the reintroduction of internal borders, as Germany has done.
gov.pl / wikipedia / Gnews.cz - HeK
English 
Czech