Poland: Plans to suspend the right to seek asylum ‘flagrantly unlawful’

Reacting to the Polish government's new migration strategy which cites the threat of Russia and Belarus using migration to 'destabilize the country' and proposes temporary suspension of the right to seek asylum, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for Europe, Dinushika Dissanayake said:

"Suspending the right to seek asylum is flagrantly unlawful and Prime Minister Tusk knows this. EU member states like Poland are playing politics with the rights of refugees and migrants. From Poland to Finland, Greece and Germany, so-called emergencies are being weaponized to enact laws that gravely undermine access to asylum and the protection from refoulement.

"These proposals endanger the rights of people seeking safety. They penalize people who may have been subject to violence and trafficking, or lured to EU borders under false pretenses. They provide for a temporary and territorial suspension of 'the right to submit asylum applications', affecting both people crossing 'irregularly' along the land border and to those at official border crossing points, referring to Finland's recently passed law on this issue.

"These proposals are also blatantly inconsistent with the newly approved EU crisis and force majeure regulation as part of the Pact on Migration and Asylum. States have a range of tools available to respond to security concerns, which must in all cases uphold human rights, including the right to asylum, as protected by the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights.

"Since 2021, the EU has been tolerating practices enacted by Poland, Latvia and Lithuania at their borders with Belarus that go beyond all powers granted to them under EU law, and more recently at Finland's border with Russia. It is high time for the European Commission to take its role as guardian of the treaties seriously and send a clear message that fundamental rights cannot be bent to political interests."

Background

States refer to "instrumentalization" of migration to designate actions by third states or other actors that facilitate irregular migration movements into another country in an attempt to destabilize it.

The plans for the suspension of asylum applications form part of Poland's strategy on migration for 2025-2030, approved by the Government on 15 October 2024.

These plans are the latest in the Polish government's efforts to undermine the human rights of refugees and migrants arriving at the Polish-Belarussian border. The proposal also comes as Poland, together with Lithuania and Latvia (in separate but similar cases), faces imminent scrutiny at the European Court of Human Rights for the situation of a group of Afghan people seeking asylum who were stranded at the border with Belarus in 2021, as the Polish authorities allegedly prevented from accessing asylum and summarily returned them.

For more information, please contact [email protected]

Out of hours contact details:
telephone: +44 20 7413 5566
Twitter: @amnestypress

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.