Majority of Poles favour reintroducing border controls within EU to curb migration, finds poll

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Almost two thirds of Poles support reintroducing border controls within the European Union in order to combat migration, a new poll has found. Any such measure, if introduced long term, would effectively abolish the Schengen Area that currently offers travel across most of Europe without border checks.

The findings come amid heated debate in neighbouring Germany over making its current temporary border controls – which have been criticised by the Polish government – permanent.

The survey, carried out by SW Research on behalf of Rzeczpospolita, a leading Polish newspaper, asked Poles: “Do you believe that the European Union should reintroduce border controls between countries in the Schengen Area to curb the flow of migrants?”

In response, 62% said that they favoured such a solution, 23% were against it, and 15% did not have an opinion.

The Schengen Area currently contains 25 of the 27 EU member states (Ireland and Cyprus being the exceptions) as well as all four members of the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland).

Those countries have agreed to abolish border controls for travel between them, although exceptions are allowed in emergency situations – such as public health concerns (as happened during the Covid-19 pandemic) and threats to security – if they are temporary and “a last resort measure”.

Currently, ten Schengen countries are implementing such measures. Most controversially, Germany last year reinstated controls on all of its borders as part of an effort to reduce the arrival of migrants who had entered the EU illegally.

Last week, Germany’s two opposition parties, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) supported a motion calling for stricter migration policies, including permanent border checks. However, a subsequent bill to that effect was rejected by parliament.

Opponents of the idea warned that such a move would effectively result in Germany exiting the Schengen Area. Former German chancellor and CDU leader Angel Merkel also criticised her former party, now led by Friedrich Merz, for voting with AfD in favour of the initial motion.

When Germany introduced checks on all its borders last year, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, called the decision “unacceptable”, saying that he would seek to rally other EU countries against it.

Tusk said that the focus should be protecting the EU’s external borders, including Poland’s frontier with Belarus, where since 2021 tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – have been crossing irregularly with the support and encouragement of the Belarusian authorities.

In response to that crisis, Tusk’s government has launched a tough new border and migration policy of its own, including plans to partially suspend the acceptance of asylum claims and to send those who submitted them back over the border to Belarus.

Tusk has been seeking the EU’s support for those policies, which would contravene international asylum laws. In an article published on Saturday, Germany’s Die Zeit reported that Poland’s plans were submitted for discussion at a recent informal meeting of EU interior ministers.

The newspaper said that the Polish proposal – which declared the Geneva Convention to be outdated and unsuited to current realities – go further than “even Merz would have dared to submit”

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Combat Camera Poland/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.