By April Lanux

Poland has reframed the debate on migration through the lenses of national security, forcing the EU to change its tune.

There is an eerie silence at the Po?owce-Pieszczatka crossing point.

Heavily armed border guards stand still, one after the other, with their gaze fixed on the other side of the snow-covered forest. A five-metre-high steel fence, decked out with thermal cameras and sensor cables, stretches as far as the eye can see.

The large road in between, once used for shipping everyday goods, is firmly blocked with successive lines of concrete barriers and hedgehogs, interlaced with barbed wire. Infantry vehicles move back and forth, ready to assist the watchful guards.

The scene suggests an impending danger is about to befall. But nothing seems to happen.

For almost four years, Poland has been on a permanent state of high alert because of its neighbour, Belarus, which stands accused of luring asylum seekers from far-away destitute nations and pushing them en masse towards the border with the purpose of sowing chaos and polarising Polish society.

The authorities in Warsaw are convinced the campaign is Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's retaliation for the sanctions the European Union imposed in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, widely discredited for its lack of freedom and fairness. Lukashenko, they say, gives orders in connivance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has tried multiple ways to punish the bloc over its support for Ukraine.

"Our top priority is to stop this artificially created migration route and not to allow people to cross the border illegally," Maciej Duszczyk, Poland's deputy minister for interior, told a group of roughly 60 reporters, including Euronews, who last week toured the crossing point. (The visit was organised by the Polish presidency of the EU Council.)

"We do our best to protect our borders," he said.

Duszczyk was escorted by high-ranking members of the Polish Border Guard and the Polish Armed Forces, reflecting the symbiosis between the civil and military spheres prompted by the crisis, which began in the summer of 2021. About 6,000 soldiers are currently deployed to support the guards who monitor the 247-kilometre-long border with Belarus. The deployment can increase to 17,000, if necessary.

There is no doubt in Poland's mind: this is more than migration – this is hybrid warfare.

It is telling the Po?owce-Pieszczatka crossing point is also part of the "East Shield," the military initiative that Poland has launched to build fortifications across NATO's Eastern flank to deter any potential military aggression. Poland insists the "East Shield," whose development is meant to run until 2028, is not a programme designed to address migration, even if both issues have become deeply interwoven on the ground.

"This is also the border of both the European Union and the NATO territory," said Colonel Mariusz Ochalski of the Armed Forces, standing next to the concrete hedgehogs.

"From that perspective, our military activity is not only a vital element of the preparations in Poland for any activity from the Eastern side but also for defending the European countries and preparedness of defending NATO countries."

A perpetual threat

The barricades at Po?owce-Pieszczatka are a stark reminder of the new reality that Lukashenko has crafted with his campaign of instrumentalised migration, whose intensity ebbs and flows according to the political juncture.

Last year, authorities registered 29,707 attempted border crossings, the highest number since the first year of the crisis, when the number exceeded 37,000 and triggered all alarms. For comparison, 2020 saw only 117 attempts. In 2018, there were just three.

Warsaw expects arrivals to increase in March when temperatures turn warmer, although things could deteriorate as soon as this month, after the presidential election in Belarus.

"It's very unpredictable and well-organised," said Andrzej Stasiulewicz, the deputy commander of the Podlaski Border Guard Division, during a presentation for journalists. "There's no constant character. It changes every time."

There are, however, some consistent traits in the operation. Asylum seekers from impoverished countries, such as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, are first flown to Minsk, often with Belarusian or Russian-issued visas. The migrants, who tend to be men, pay between $8,000 and $12,000 (€7,700 - €11,500) for the journey.

Once in Belarus, they are aided by a "facilitator" who brings them closer to the border and gives them instructions on how to break into Polish territory. In most cases, these "facilitators" are Ukrainian nationals with a legal right to stay in Poland who look for an easy way to make extra money: they can earn an estimated $500 for each person they transport.

The Belarusian state services are closely involved throughout the scheme, Stasiulewicz said, and provide asylum seekers with "dangerous tools" to attack Polish border guards, "which makes our services very difficult and demanding." The killing of a 21-year-old soldier led to a bill that eased restrictions on the use of firearms in self-defence.

The high-tech fence and vast deployment of personnel have proved effective in containing the crisis: out of the 29,707 border crossings attempted in 2024, roughly 10,900 were successful. Of these, only a minority actually applied for asylum: last year, Poland registered 2,434 applications filed by migrants apprehended at the border.

Authorities say the gap between crossings and applications is explained by the disinformation fed by Belarus, which makes migrants believe they can request asylum directly in Germany, their desired destination. Once they realise that, under EU rules, they need to apply in the first country of arrival (namely, Poland) and remain there while they await a final decision, many of them turn back voluntarily.

But humanitarian organisations say there is another side of the story: pushbacks, the proscribed practice of expelling migrants to prevent access to the asylum process.

In a daming report published in December, Human Rights Watch found a "consistent pattern of abuse" by Polish officials against migrants that included "unlawful pushbacks, beatings with batons, use of pepper spray, and destruction or confiscation of their phones." The report described how some migrants were "summarily" removed after having ventured deep inside Polish territory, away from the border, while others were "coerced to sign papers" that, unbeknownst to them, meant a refusal to request asylum.

According to Human Rights Watch, those sent back to Belarus suffered "violence, inhuman and degrading treatment." One Ethiopian woman recounted how Belarusian guards forced her to strip naked and threatened to rape her.

"Abusive actions by Belarusian officials, including forcing people over the border into Poland, do not relieve Poland of its obligations to protect the rights of people who enter its territory and the prohibition on forcibly returning anyone to a real risk of abuse," Human Rights Watch said, referring to the international principle of non-refoulement.

Asked if pushbacks were contributing to thwarting crossings, Stasiulewicz, the deputy commander, said migrants apprehended in the "immediate vicinity" of the Polish side of the border could be promptly returned to Belarus "in line with our legal framework."

A strikingly similar picture was painted in September by the Norwegian Council of Refugees (NRC), which released a report that spoke about "alarmingly common" pushbacks and "unforgiving conditions" at the frosty border.

"Pushbacks prevent refugees from seeking asylum or international protection in Poland. Once refugees cross into Polish territory, they are forcibly escorted back to the border and pushed to the other side of the fence," the NRC said.

During the tour with journalists, Deputy Minister Duszczyk rejected the allegations, saying he preferred the term "turnbacks." Policy fusion

Despite the lingering controversy about illegal practices at the border, Poland appears to be winning the political debate – and reframing EU policy along the way.

Traditionally, European nations have approached migration as a largely socio-economic subject, touching upon issues like education, welfare and housing. The 2015-2016 crisis, which sent asylum applications to record-high levels, expanded the conversation into concerns of social cohesion, street crime and human rights, as well as hot-button considerations about burden-sharing between the South and the North.

At no point did the heated discussions enter the realm of national security, which is reserved for matters of extreme severity that endanger state institutions, such as military attacks, terrorism, organised crime, electoral interference and natural disasters.

But the direct intervention of Lukashenko's regime, in conjunction with Putin's, at a time of war in Europe drastically changed the equation.

Central Europe has never been a prominent route for African and Middle Eastern migrants seeking to reach EU territory and submit their applications for international protection. Instead, migrants have either flown straight to their preferred location and later overstayed their visas or resorted to the most geographically logical (and dangerous) place to move between continents: the Mediterranean Sea.

In Poland's view, the only reason why Eritrean and Somali men are suddenly arriving at its border is because of the concerted efforts by a state actor driven by political goals. This crucial factor, without precedent in the country's history, means the response to the challenge has to go beyond the conventional rulebook.

In October, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk shocked Brussels when he announced plans to establish a "temporary, territorial suspension" of the right of asylum in response to Lukashenko's campaign, arguing national security was under threat.

"This right to asylum is used exactly against the essence of the right to asylum," he said.

Tusk also doubled down on his refusal to implement the Migration Pact, the legislative reform the EU approved in 2024 to collectively manage the arrival of new asylum seekers. The prime minister said the Pact, which features one regulation with special rules to cope with cases of instrumentalisation, would "harm" Polish security.

The European Commission reacted fast to remind Tusk that member states have an "obligation" to provide access to the asylum procedure," enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Commission said the Pact was "binding" for all countries and did not foresee the suspension of the right.

But a few days later, the tone began shifting.

Tusk arrived at an EU summit and presented his new strategy, with an angle that merged migration and security into one. His pitch was not met with reservations by other leaders in the room, several diplomats said, and received an explicit endorsement in the conclusions, which read: "Exceptional situations require appropriate measures."

During the summit, Tusk said he was drawing inspiration from an emergency law that Finland had introduced in July and that legal scholars said effectively legalises pushbacks.

By December, the transformation was completed.

The Commission, in one of the first initiatives of the new mandate, published a 10-page document with guidelines for "countering hybrid threats from the weaponisation of migration and strengthening security at the EU's external borders."

The document, which mentions the word "security" a whopping 40 times, laid out circumstances in which member states may limit "certain fundamental rights," like the right to asylum, as long as the measure is "limited to what is strictly necessary."

Speaking to reporters, Executive Vice-President Henna Virkunnen adopted a position with unmistakable echoes of Warsaw. "We are not speaking about migration policies here," she said. "This is about security. It's a security issue."

Humanitarian organisations cried foul, saying the fact that migrants are being subject to instrumentalisation does not mean their claims for international protection are invalid.

"This cynical reasoning ignores the fact that refugees and migrants who have been lured to EU's borders often experience human rights violations in the process, both on the EU side and by Belarus," said Adriana Tidona, a researcher at Amnesty International.

"While we see a growing tendency to invoke security considerations in connection with migration, we must resist attempts to normalise 'emergency' situations and derogations from human rights."

Poland was unfazed. For its six-month presidency of the EU Council, the country presented a programme under the slogan "Security, Europe!" that broke down the concept of security into seven different dimensions.

One of these dimensions was migration.

Tags:

• At the Poland-Belarus border

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