Poland Suspends Right To Asylum Amid EU Clash With Belarus Over Border

Forbes

27-03-2025

Poland's Prime Minister, Donald Tusk on March 28, 2024. (Photo by)
A controversial legislative bill has been signed into law by Poland's president, officially suspending the right for people to claim asylum within its territory. The move has been condemned by human rights groups and NGOs, but is in keeping with other Western European countries who have made similar moves in recent times.
The bill, first announced by Poland's centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk in late 2024 comes amid a perceived crisis over irregular migration in Europe. 'Our right and our duty is to protect the Polish and European border,' wrote Tusk at the time, '(our) security will not be subject to negotiation.' The bill was eventually passed - by a very large majority - by the Polish parliament in February 2025, and was signed into law by president Andrzej Duda in late March.
The context for the bill is the alleged 'instrumentalization' of irregular migrants by Belarus in recent years. Put more simply, the Russia-allied country on the EU's eastern flank is accused of deliberately shepherding - sometimes outright forcing - people to cross the border into the EU. This, it is alleged, is a form of 'hybrid warfare' in which Belarus is attempting to destabilise the EU by overwhelming its infrastructure and encouraging political discontent across the bloc.
Poland, for its part, is currently accused in the European Court of Human Rights of violently forcing people back across the border to Belarus, in violation of EU and international refugee law. Prime Minister Tusk has argued that the 'instrumentalization' of migrants has created a state of emergency, justifying the pushbacks as well as this new law suspending asylum.
Aside from the tensions with Belarus, Poland has also long been at odds with the EU's leadership over the issue of refugees and asylum across the bloc. Under previous governments, the country argued that the presence of many Ukrainian refugees (even before the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022) meant Poland should not be obliged to resettle refugees from the Middle East and Africa. The more liberal Tusk has adopted similar lines, recently announcing the country would not comply with the important EU 'Dublin Regulation' on returning asylum seekers to the EU country of initial registration.
Poland is by far not the only EU country looking to limit or end asylum applications on its territory. In 2024, Germany effectively closed its borders and announced it would seek to prevent people entering its territory in order to seek shelter, something that provoked widespread criticism from NGOS, civil society groups and Donald Tusk himself.
At the same time, the new governing coalition in Austria has ann0unced its intentions to limit the amount of people claiming asylum there. More broadly, the EU itself has long relied on agreements with countries of origin and transit such as Libya, Mauritania and Tunisia to have them prevent people arriving in Europe at all. The EU's executive arm also recently announced changes to EU law to allow so-called 'return hubs' in foreign countries to be set up, where people could be deported and detained outside EU territory.