Human rights and a Holocaust memorial group have urged the Polish prime minister to shelve plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum, telling him that the region’s volatility “doesn’t exempt us from humanity”.
The intervention from more than 60 NGOs including Amnesty International and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation comes after Donald Tusk told his party of plans to introduce a new migration strategy.
It would include “the temporary territorial suspension of the right to asylum”, he said. “I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision.”
In an open letter, the coalition of NGOs criticised the comments, saying that fundamental rights and freedoms were not fodder for discussion or political bargaining. “It is thanks to them that thousands of Polish women and men found shelter abroad in the difficult times of communist totalitarianism,” it read.
“We live in difficult and uncertain times of war, conflicts breaking out all over the world, and we ourselves function on the edge of a war,” it added. “But this doesn’t exempt us from humanity and from observing the law.”
Since 2021, Warsaw and the EU have accused Belarus and Russia of encouraging migrants and refugees, most of them from the Middle East and Africa, to travel to Minsk and onwards to the Polish border.
The migratory route was seized on by politicians hoping to score political points, leading rights groups to warn of pushbacks and violence against those seeking a better life. Hundreds of people have gone missing, while dozens of deaths have been documented.
As Poland gears up for presidential elections expected in May, Tusk on Saturday hinted that his campaign would focus on migration as he vowed to reduce irregular migration to “a minimum” and “regain 100% of the control over who enters and leaves Poland”.
He did not offer further details on how he planned to temporarily suspend asylum or explain how he would skirt international laws that oblige countries to offer the right of asylum to people seeking protection.
Members of Tusk’s coalition government expressed concern over the move. The parliament speaker Szymon Hołownia, whose centre-right Poland 2050 party is part of Tusk’s ruling coalition, stressed that Tusk had been speaking only for his own party.
“We are of the opinion that the right to asylum is ‘sacred’ in international law,” Hołownia said on social media. Krzysztof Śmiszek of the Left, another coalition member, pointed to the importance that respect for the law had played in guiding the country during the previous rightwing government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party.
“The rule of law also means respect for international law,” Śmiszek wrote on social media. “It showed us the way during the dark rule of PiS. Let’s not stray from this path.”
While the EU declined to comment on the specific plans, a spokesperson for the European commission said it was in touch with Polish authorities to find out more details. She acknowledged the need to work towards a European solution capable of tackling “hybrid attacks” from Russia and Belarus, but noted that “member states have international and EU obligations, including the obligation to provide access to the asylum procedure.”
On Monday, Tusk defended his plans. “It is our right and our duty to protect the Polish and European border,” he wrote on social media. “Its security will not be negotiated.”
Tusk’s plans come months after Finland adopted a new law that granted border guards power to push back asylum seekers crossing from Russia.
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It appears that Tusk is hoping to bolster political support before the election by targeting migration, said Małgorzata Szuleka of Poland’s oldest human rights organisation, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.
“It’s so disappointing to see this coming from this government, who made so many promises for increased cooperation and policymaking with civil society,” she said. “When it comes to the question of migration, we were supposed to have policy but all we have is politics.”
She described the plans as unworkable. “It goes without saying that it is legally impossible to suspend the right to asylum,” she said, citing international law, EU law and the Polish constitution. “I read this statement purely for the purpose of national politics. It is extremely populistic.”
Poland is only the latest EU member state seeking flexibility and/or the tightening up of EU asylum rules in the run-up to a European summit on Thursday that is likely to be dominated by the issue of irregular migration.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote to EU leaders on Monday, calling for exploration of “return hubs” outside the EU, as well as learning lessons from Italy’s agreement with Albania – an EU candidate country that has agreed to host migration centres to process claims of male asylum seekers seeking to enter the union.
Some EU leaders have previously criticised schemes for external processing of asylum seekers, such as the previous UK government’s deal with Rwanda, but there is now growing appetite in the EU for similar approaches. Germany, once a relatively liberal voice on asylum on migration, has become more hawkish and is thought unlikely to block such initiatives.
In her letter, von der Leyen also praised the EU’s controversial deals with Tunisia and joint work with Libyan authorities, which have been widely condemned by human rights groups. She said irregular arrivals on the central Mediterranean route were down two-thirds in 2024 so far, which she attributed largely to these agreements.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Rankin in Brussels