(Bloomberg) — Poland plans to temporarily suspend asylum rights as part of a new policy that aims to reduce undocumented migration to a minimum, said Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
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Saturday’s announcement comes weeks after Germany extended border checks with its neighbors, and after years of a migration crisis that Poland says was stirred up the presidents of Russia and Belarus.
“One element of the strategy will be the temporary territorial suspension of the right of asylum, and I will be calling for this decision to be recognized in Europe,” Tusk said in Warsaw.
“We know very well how it is used by Lukashenko and Putin, by smugglers, people smugglers, people traffickers — how the right to asylum is used exactly against the essence of the right to asylum.”
Tusk said he would tighten Poland’s borders against undocumented entrants despite potential disapproval from the European Union. More details of his plan are expected next week.
“We will not respect and implement any EU ideas if we are certain that they are detrimental to our security,” Tusk said, referring to the EU migration pact.
Poland’s reservations about EU migration policy add to increasing objections voiced by other members of the bloc. In September, Hungary and the Netherlands asked be be released from the asylum agreement, while Denmark has called for a tightening of EU migration rules.
The pact, approved earlier this year after nearly a decade of turbulent negotiations, was designed to standardize the system used for processing asylum applications and accelerate the procedures.
It also established a “solidarity mechanism” that required member states, for the first time, to agree either to admit an annual quota of migrants, pay a fee for each asylum seeker they reject, or increase support for EU-wide operations for handling arrivals.
Earlier in the week, Tusk, a former president of the European Council, called on the EU to do more to tackle undocumented migration as the country deals with illegal crossings at its eastern border with Belarus.
“Poland is in a special situation,” Tusk said at a news conference in Prague on Wednesday with Czech Premier Petr Fiala. “Therefore, our position within the EU will be particularly tough.”
Poland has tried various measures to cut down on entries through its eastern border, including constructing a wall guarded by soldiers and pledging to spend billions on additional fortications. The number of irregular crossings into Poland has dropped significantly as a result.
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