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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
A group of protesters today blocked a bridge on the Polish-German border in protest against transfers of migrants from Germany to Poland. Among those to attend the demonstration were figures from Poland’s main opposition party, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS).
The protest – titled “Stop Germany from flooding Poland with migrants” – took place on the Polish side of a bridge that connects the German city of Frankfurt an der Oder with the Polish town of Słubice.
Polish conservative news website Niezależna claims that “several hundred” people attended the demonstration, though drone footage broadcast by Republika, a conservative TV station, appears to show smaller numbers.
Local newspaper Gazeta Lubuska reports that, while car traffic was able to flow during most of the protest, at one stage the protesters “managed to block the bridge, [with] police unable to stop them”. Niezależna, by contrast, claims that it was the police’s intervention itself that led to the road being blocked.
“The European Union and Germany, in cooperation with the Tusk government, want to bring millions of culturally alien migrants to Poland!” wrote the organisers ahead of the event, referring to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
“Mass migration is associated with a huge increase in the number of rapes, murders, and acts of terror,” they added, quoted by Niezależna. “Let’s not allow such a fate to befall Poland.”
Each year, Germany sends back hundreds of asylum seekers who have applied for protection in Poland before unlawfully moving to Germany while their claim is still being processed. All EU countries have the right to carry out such returns under the so-called Dublin Regulation.
Meanwhile, since Germany reintroduced border controls with Poland in 2023, it has been turning back thousands of migrants at the border if they do not have the legal right to be in Germany. Tusk has criticised Germany for those measures and his government has also introduced a new strategy to restrict migration to Poland itself.
Germany plans to open a new "departure centre" on the border with Poland that will speed up the deportation of asylum seekers who have submitted claims in other EU member states but then come to Germany https://t.co/GCdNOoadcF
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) February 17, 2025
Today’s demonstration took place despite Słubice’s mayor, Marzena Słodownik, not granting permission for it to be held due to concerns over public safety and order. The organisers appealed, but their claim was rejected by a court due to errors in how it had been submitted.
The main organiser, Robert Bąkiewicz – a prominent nationalist leader who in 2023 stood as a PiS parliamentary candidate – claimed, without presenting evidence, that the protest had been banned “on the government’s orders”.
Bąkiewicz was for years the main organiser of the annual nationalist Independence March in Warsaw. In 2023, he was convicted for carrying out a “hooligan act” of violence against a female protester during mass demonstrations against the introduction of a near-total abortion ban.
Among those in attendance at today’s protest were PiS MEP and former government minister Elżbieta Rafałska, who spoke briefly to the crowd, and PiS MP and former deputy minister Jerzy Materna.
Jesteśmy na proteście przeciw przymusowej relokacji w Słubicach. Protestujemy przeciw niemieckim machlojkom migracyjnym. Nie chcemy dla naszego województwa i dla Polski takiego samego losu jaki zgotowała sobie Europa Zachodnia pic.twitter.com/0NlHOme5pl
— Prawy Prosty EU (@PrawyProstyEU) March 8, 2025
Some protesters held banners opposing the European Union’s migration and asylum pact, which was approved last year. Among other measures, it will introduce the requirement for member states to provide “solidarity” to countries on the front line of migration pressure.
Among the ways this can be done is to accept the transfer of asylum seekers from those frontline countries, an idea that has raised concern in Poland and been criticised by both Tusk’s government and PiS. However, the pact allows countries to provide financial support instead of receiving migrants.
Speaking to Gazeta Lubuska, local PiS politician Jacek Kurzępa said that people in the region “feel a certain sense of threat related to the migration pact”.
He emphasised that they were not opposed to immigration in general. But “these should be guests we invite, not those who are thrown to us from the German side, which cannot cope with unwanted migrants…In border towns, we increasingly see people from a different cultural background, about whom we are not sure.”
Poland "will not implement" the EU migration pact if it involves the "forced acceptance of migrants", says @donaldtusk.
That would "waste the efforts of our border officers who are risking their lives" to make “Poland one of the safest places in Europe" https://t.co/ZUTLcmRkHA
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) February 4, 2025
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: Jerzy Materna/X
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
