Escalating German-Polish border dispute hampers Europe’s free movement

BERLIN — In the latest sign that Europe’s principle of free movement of people and goods is succumbing to domestic political pressures, Poland and Germany are locked in an escalating dispute over border policy, with Poland set to impose retaliatory controls Monday at crossings with its western neighbor.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the change this week, calling it a response to Germany’s unilateral decision earlier this year to tighten its own border checks and turn away asylum seekers. “We remain advocates for freedom of movement in Europe,” Tusk said, “but the condition is the shared will of all neighbors, symmetrical and united action, to minimize the uncontrolled flow of migrants across our borders.”

In 1995, Europe began eliminating border controls first between Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal and then steadily with an increasing number of countries in the Schengen visa-free travel zone, which now covers all European Union countries except Ireland and Cyprus, as well as non-E. U. nations Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

But countries can reimpose border controls under certain circumstances, and several have done so in response to the coronavirus pandemic and concerns over an influx of migrants starting in 2015.

Poland’s new border tightening, which will also apply to its boundary with Lithuania, comes amid a deepening rift over migration and asylum policy within the European Union as national leaders face political backlash over growing immigrant populations and tensions over integration and assimilation.

The tit-for-tat measure by Warsaw follows protests in recent weeks at Polish-German crossings, some backed by Polish far-right groups, and growing criticism from nationalist parties accusing Tusk’s government of accepting migrants pushed back from Germany.

The new center-right-led German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt intensified border checks days after taking office in May, allowing border police to turn away asylum seekers — a violation of European Union asylum rules. Exceptions are being made for “vulnerable groups,” including pregnant women and children. German authorities were previously allowed to turn away migrants, who, for example, are undocumented individuals or present fake or forged travel documents.

Under E.U. law, member states cannot turn asylum seekers away at the border without first allowing them to apply for asylum and have their claim assessed, even if they must later be returned to their first country of entry into the bloc.

Poland has not indicated that it will force asylum seekers to return to Germany. But Winfried Kluth, a migration law expert and member of Germany’s Expert Council on Integration and Migration, warned that an escalation in political tensions could risk leaving asylum seekers as “refugees in orbit” — shuttled from one country to another.

“This problem was actually supposed to be solved by the common European asylum system,” Kluth said. “If the rejection at the borders leads to a dispute over which state is responsible, this problem could arise again.”

Spot-checks at the German-Polish border were imposed by Germany’s previous center-left government in October 2023, and extended to all of Germany’s land borders in September.

Despite a Berlin court ruling that the regulation to turn away asylum seekers is illegal and violates European Union immigration policy, the German government has persisted with the tightened controls. Dobrindt justified the decision by claiming that the court ruling applied only to the individual cases before it, involving three Somali nationals who were denied entry from Poland on May 9.

Faced with growing domestic pressure from his own constituents, Tusk said Poland has had enough.

“Poland’s patient position after Germany formally introduced unilateral border controls is wearing out,” Tusk said Tuesday. “With no border checks on the Polish side, it becomes difficult to determine whether those being returned or redirected to Poland should be sent there.”

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrives to take part in a Nordic-Baltic meeting during the European Council meeting in Brussels on June 26.

Chased in the polls by the nationalist, anti-migration Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Merz — who campaigned on a tougher migration stance ahead of his election victory in February — has defended the German measures.

The chancellor said Tuesday that the Schengen system can survive only if it’s not “abused by those who promote irregular migration, in particular by smuggling migrants.”

There were “no returns from Germany to Poland of asylum seekers who had already arrived in Germany,” Merz insisted.

Noting Poland’s plan to impose checks with Lithuania, where migrants have arrived via Belarus, Merz said: “We have a common problem here that we want to solve together.”

Since early May, Germany, has rejected about 5,960 people at its land borders — about 330 of whom were asylum seekers, according to the Interior Ministry. Of the asylum seekers turned away, more than 110, or one-third, were at the German-Polish border.

The legality and efficacy of the asylum return policy have been questioned by migration experts, as well as within Merz’s own government coalition.

Adis Ahmetović, parliamentary spokesman for foreign policy for the center-left Social Democrats — the junior coalition partner to Merz’s Christian Democrats — criticized Merz and Dobrindt’s strategy vis a vis European neighbors.

“The current development makes it clear that there have been failures in coordination,” Ahmetović said. “Communication and coordination at European level must improve significantly under Merz — in the interests of a united Europe that is capable of acting.”

Kluth said Merz’s government risked creating a precedent for breaking the law among other E.U. member states. “What’s dangerous at the moment is this race to the bottom: that you don’t need to follow the rules of law,” he said.

Police unions have also expressed concern that staffing the border diverts resources from other duties. Some 3,000 additional officers have been deployed to Germany’s borders since the return policy went into force in early May, bringing the total to about 14,000.

This is a politically delicate time for Tusk, whose centrist coalition faces stiff opposition from the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party. Last month, PiS-backed historian Karol Nawrocki won the presidency, deepening political gridlock and stalling Tusk’s initiatives on issues such as abortion, judicial independence and LGBTQ+ rights.

A line of cars waits in standstill traffic in the Polish city of Slubice to pass through border controls on the bridge to Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, on June 1.

With national elections expected in Poland in 2027 — or sooner if the coalition falters — Tusk is under pressure to project a sense of control and to answer the criticism of migration policy by PiS.

Aleks Szczerbiak, a Polish politics expert at the University of Sussex in Britain, said Tusk was not eager to impose border measures, but that his hand was forced by extensive news coverage in recent days of issues at the border, particularly the formation of informal border guard groups that include right-wing nationalists.

“He really didn’t want to introduce border controls,” Szczerbiak said. “Partly because he wants to keep good relations with Germany, and partly because there are inconveniences for Poles who need to cross the border regularly.”

Tusk’s government argues that the new checks on the Lithuanian frontier are needed to stem flows of migrants entering via Lithuania and Latvia from Belarus, which Poland and other European Union countries have accused of engineering a migration crisis since 2021 in collaboration with Russia. Moscow and Minsk deny the claims, despite evidence that Belarus was organizing flights from Africa and Asia and promising free onward passage.

Critics warn that countries’ unilateral border controls risk undermining free movement — which is a pillar of the European Union. Under E.U. rules, internal border checks are permitted only as a “last resort” in response to serious threats. But over the past decade, temporary controls have become common — and often indefinite. Currently, 11 of the 29 countries in the visa-free zone have checks in place, the majority of which cite irregular migration as the principal rationale.

Tusk has signaled that further steps may follow if Germany extends its checks. “The time when Poland would not respond appropriately to such actions has definitively come to an end,” he said.

Wiener reported from Washington.