Germany and Poland are arguing about tightening border controls

The visa scandal that deeply embarrassed Poland’s ruling party PiS this month – just before the October 15 elections – has also led to open feuding with neighboring Germany. At a party meeting in Nuremberg on Saturday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) demanded clarification from the Polish government over allegations that officials have sold hundreds of thousands of Polish work visas to migrants from Africa and Asia, allowing them to travel freely within Europe.

“I don’t want Poland to just wave people through and then have to discuss our asylum policy,” the German chancellor said. Scholz spoke of a “dramatic increase” in the number of irregular arrivals in Germany and hinted at stricter controls at the border with Poland. On Wednesday afternoon, his Minister of the Interior and party colleague Nancy Faeser confirmed this tightening. The additional checks at varying locations on the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic will be carried out immediately.

This week, PiS reacted furiously to the suggestion that tightening German border controls is a consequence of the Polish visa scandal, and threatened to hermetically close the border with Germany. The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zbigniew Rau, advised Scholz further to ‘refrain from comments that could harm bilateral relations’. In a leaked letter to the European Commission, the Polish government writes according to the news site Politico that human smugglers in Poland usually come from Germany.

Route shifted

The Polish anger can be explained because the number of asylum applications in Germany by people with a Polish visa has increased, but this should not be exaggerated. According to the German government in the period from January 2021 to May 2023, this involved 1,230 people. According to the Dublin Regulation they can also be sent back to Poland because of that work visa.

But it is likely that the number of irregular arrivals from Poland has increased sharply. This year, German police have already intercepted more than 18,000 attempts to cross the Polish-German border illegally. The number of successful attempts is unknown, but This year Germany already had 220,000 asylum applications – 66 percent more than a year earlier.

It appears that the so-called ‘Balkan route’ from Austria, where stricter border controls have been carried out around the border with Germany since 2015, has been shifted to Poland. According to the German government, these mainly concern Syrians and Afghans who come to Poland via Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia and sometimes also to Germany via the Czech Republic. In recent years, more irregular migrants have been traveling via Russia and Belarus to Poland, on their way to Germany.

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That is why Scholz is under pressure in his own country. For example, coalition partner FDP and opposition party CDU argue for a stricter migration policy through a constitutional amendment with a broad political consensus, as already happened in the early 1990s. There are also grumblings from states and municipalities. There are enough beds so far, but it is not enough. Germany has also welcomed more than a million Ukrainian refugees in the past nineteen months.

The state of Brandenburg, which borders Poland, is particularly vocal. There is a significant increase in the number of irregular arrivals, from an average of 35 migrants per day in August to 57 in September. The Prime Minister of Bavaria and CSU chairman Marcus Söder recently spoke out in favor of a maximum number of 200,000 migrants per year.

Not a tear

According to Faeser, such a maximum is contrary to international law and according to Scholz the right to asylum in Germany is not up for discussion. But SPD politicians must also think about the elections in the states of Bavaria and Hesse on October 8. The SPD is not doing well in the polls. In Hesse, where Faeser is party leader and hopes to become prime minister, her party has 19 percent, just above the 16 percent of the right-wing radical AfD. Nationally, the SPD is at 17 percent in the polls, behind the AfD (21 percent).

Moreover, Scholz would not shed a tear if PiS were to disappear from the Polish government. Because in addition to anti-immigration language, PiS also likes to use anti-German rhetoric to attract votes. For example, compensation for the destruction during the Second World War is a popular campaign theme. PiS called opposition leader Donald Tusk “a mole of the Germans”.

Faeser – who previously called tightening border controls “symbolic politics” and also impracticable due to a lack of personnel – said on Wednesday that he was “optimistic” about the possibility of carrying out the tightened border controls “in close and good consultation” with Poland. In her explanation, she focused entirely on human smugglers, not on the neighbors.

She had this last weekend in the newspaper World on Sunday German expectations have already been tempered. One should not think that there will no longer be asylum seekers coming once the extra border controls are introduced, Faeser said. “If someone applies for asylum at our border, the application must be processed in Germany, that is a clear obligation.”

On Thursday, Faeser will speak with her EU colleagues in Brussels about migration. Scholz has her according to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ordered on Wednesday to agree to stricter EU asylum legislation. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) is said to have previously strongly opposed the reform, which would allow EU member states to hold migrants longer in detention centers during an asylum crisis. Due to the resistance of the German Greens, negotiations in Brussels have been at a standstill until now.

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