Poland to start controls on borders with Germany, Lithuania over migration

By Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland will introduce temporary controls along borders with Germany and Lithuania on July 7, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, echoing several other European Union countries in reimposing frontier checks to stem illegal migration.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany itself have also brought back border controls, underlining a public backlash against undocumented migration that has strained the EU's Schengen passport-free travel zone.

"We consider the temporary reintroduction of controls necessary to reduce the uncontrolled flows of migrants across the Polish-German border to a minimum," Tusk told a meeting of his cabinet.

Tusk's liberal government has been accused by nationalist and far-right opposition parties of accepting numerous illegal migrants being sent back from Germany. The government had argued that the numbers were limited.

Debate over migration in Poland has turned increasingly heated in recent weeks, with far-right activists starting to organise patrols along the border with Germany.

Germany said in February that it was extending its own temporary border controls for six months.

Tusk, who has previously called on Berlin to do more to help its neighbours protect the EU's external border, criticised Germany's approach to migrants at its own frontier, saying it placed excessive pressure on Poland.

"Poland's patient position after Germany formally introduced unilateral border controls is wearing out," Tusk said.

He added that it had become difficult to determine whether migrants being sent from Germany to Poland should really be returned there under EU rules stating that migrants should apply for asylum in the first member state they enter.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Tuesday Germany wants to preserve the Schengen system, which allows passport-free movement, but this could only work if it was not abused by criminals who smuggle migrants.

"We know that the Polish government also wants to impose border controls with Lithuania in order to limit illegal border crossings from Lithuania to Poland," Merz told a news conference. "So, we have a common problem here that we want to solve together."

Knut Abraham, the German government’s commissioner for Poland, was critical of the tilt towards border restrictions.

"The solution cannot lie in pushing migrants back and forth between Poland and Germany or in cementing border controls on both sides," he was quoted by Die Welt newspaper as saying.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys told a news conference that the Polish government had informed him about its decision, BNS news agency reported.

"(We need to see) what measures should be most effective, while maintaining the expectation that they will not violate our common interest in having free movement of persons, and will also contribute to our goal of firmly and solidly protecting the external border of the EU and NATO," BNS quoted him as saying.

Poland has been facing what it says is a migrant crisis orchestrated by Belarus and Russia on its eastern border since 2021. Both countries deny encouraging migrants to cross.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, additional reporting by Rachel More and Madeline Chambers in Berlin, Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Jagoda Darlak in Gdansk)