Poland plans to temporarily end asylum as part of its strategy to limit illegal migration amid tensions on the border with Belarus, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
„ One of the elements of the migration strategy will be the temporary suspension of the right to asylum,” said Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Warsaw accuses Minsk of encouraging migrants to cross the Belarusian border with Poland.
„I will ask for this, I will ask for the recognition of this decision in Europe. This is because we know very well how it is used by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin... by human traffickers, how this right of asylum is used exactly against the essence of the right of asylum,” he told a congress , organized by his political coalition "Civil Platform".
Migration has been on the agenda in Poland since 2021, when large numbers of people from the Middle East and Africa began making illegal attempts to cross the Belarusian border with Poland. Warsaw and the European Union said that this was a crisis organized by Minsk and Russia, Reuters recalls.
Russia and Belarus deny responsibility for the migrant pressure. Tusk said he would present the migration strategy at a ministerial council meeting scheduled for October 15.
Since taking office in December 2023, Tusk has pursued a tough policy on migration – a strategy that won broad public support but unsettled activists who had hoped he would abandon the approach of the previous nationalist administration, according to Reuters.
In July, the Polish parliament passed a law expanding the powers of security services to use weapons against migrants at the border with Belarus.