WARSAW: As part of a strategy to reduce illegal migration amid tensions with Belarus, which Warsaw accuses of funneling migrants across its border, Poland plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum.
“One of the components of the movement technique will be the impermanent regional suspension of the right to shelter,” State leader Donald Tusk said on Saturday.
He stated at a congress that was held by his liberal Civic Coalition (KO) group, which is the largest member of Poland’s coalition government. He said, “I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision.”
According to Tusk, the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, and people smugglers were violating the essence of the right to asylum.
Since 2021, when a large number of people, primarily from the Middle East and Africa, began attempting to illegally cross the border with Belarus in what Warsaw and the European Union claimed was a crisis orchestrated by Minsk and its ally Russia, migration has been a major topic of discussion in Poland. Russia and Belarus have rejected obligation.
On October 15, the first anniversary of the election that brought the coalition he leads to power, Tusk stated that he would present the migration strategy at a meeting of the government.
Tusk has pursued a tough policy on migration since taking office in December 2023. This strategy has garnered widespread public support, but it has disappointed activists who had hoped he would abandon the nationalist approach of the previous administration.
