Border Controls Reintroduced on Poland’s Frontiers with Germany and Lithuania
Border checks were reintroduced on Poland’s frontiers with Germany and Lithuania at midnight, as the country seeks to tighten its control on immigration.
The move was announced by the Polish government last week amid a fiery political debate largely focused on the German authorities’ policy of returning illegal migrants to the border, leaving them stranded.
Nationalist and right-wing opposition parties have portrayed the situation as a crisis left to spiral out of control by the centrist governing coalition, but Prime Minister Donald Tusk says claims that Poland is being “overrun by illegal immigrants from the west” are untrue.
Nonetheless, the PM has opted to reintroduce checks at 52 sites on the Polish-German border and 13 sites on the boundary with Lithuania for an initial 30 days. At 13 crossings on the western border and three in the northeast, controls will be continuous, while checks will be done on an ad hoc basis at other sites.
Border guards, who are having to drastically scale up their operations, are being supported by 5,000 military personnel, including specialist drone units.
Driver detained for transporting Afghans
While the issue on Poland’s western border is related to the return of migrants, the decision to bring back checks on the Lithuanian border is related to Russia and Belarus’s longstanding policy of funneling migrants into Poland via the Baltic states.
Just before midnight, officers apprehended an Estonian man on suspicion of illegally transporting four Afghan citizens over the Polish-Lithuanian frontier.
The commander of the regional Border Guard unit, Brigadier General Sławomir Klekotka, said the driver had been detained and the illegal migrants would be handed over to the Lithuanian authorities.
He added that 220 cases of illegal migration have been detected on the Polish-Lithuanian border this year.
Tensions on the German border were exacerbated last week by the main conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party’s much-publicized tour of frontier crossings, as some of the party’s top politicians expressed support for a so-called “citizens’ patrol” movement, which has been documenting the arrival of migrants.
German media reported this week that anti-migration patrol groups—branded “militias” by Tusk—forced an Afghan migrant back over the border to Germany. Rights groups say the situation is overblown, accusing PiS and the far-right Confederation of playing politics with people’s lives.
‘Fully prepared’
Infrastructure Minister Dariusz Klimczak told a press conference at the border crossing with Germany in Świecko that the relevant institutions were “fully prepared to carry out tasks related to the restoration of border control.”
“The Ministry of Infrastructure treats this task as an important logistics operation, the purpose of which is to ensure good, efficient transport both in terms of transport for ordinary citizens and from the point of view of the Polish economy,” he said.
He added that Polish infrastructure has the capacity to deal with the increased checks, predicting that any difficulties that arise “will not be great.”“We are trying to organize our work in such a way that [difficulties] are not felt by citizens,” he said.
Source: Tvp World