Migration: Poland and Germans control travelers at the border

Poland’s border protection has started its announced controls on the border with Germany with a large personnel requirement. After just a few hours, Poland Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak drew a positive record of the temporary controls, which also extend to the Polish-Lithuanian border. “Everything is going without incidents, the traffic has so far flows smoothly,” he told TVN24.

As the Polish Ministry of the Interior announced on X, travelers have been checked at 52 border crossings since midnight. Most of them react calmly. But some commuters and buyers doubt the meaningfulness of the measure.

Quickly over the border to refueling

At a control point in Krajnik Dolny, the military police supported by the military police with police vests with the drivers coming from the direction of the Brandenburg city of Schwedt – such as Germans who want to recharge their batteries in Poland before the start of their working day. Trucks are not checked here.

At the transition between Frankfurt/or to Slubice, the officials usually wave vehicles with Polish license plates on the border. Cars with German license plates are stopped briefly. Pedestrians are consistently checked here. Cyclists also have to show their papers.

A banner with the slogan “No! Immigration” hangs right next to the control point. It comes from the right -wing radical “movement to defend the borders”, which calls for self -empowered border patrols. On the oncoming lane, towards Germany, where many commuters are on the road and the federal police checked randomly, there is significantly more traffic early in the morning.

For the time being, the traffic impairments are manageable, an ADAC spokesman reported in the morning. “We have no backlog to Germany,” said a spokesman for the federal police in Görlitz.

Poland Interior Minister: Controls against Schleuser

“The controls are directed against those who are involved in the illegal smuggling of migrants across the border. Normal travelers have nothing to fear,” says Poland’s Minister of the Interior, according to a post of his authority.

Controls for the time being until the beginning of August

The Polish controls should initially last until August 5. If you want to cross the border, you have to have a identity card or a passport. At 13 border crossings to Lithuania is also checked. There, the Polish border guards arrested an Estonian citizen in the early morning. According to the information, he had four people from Afghanistan in the car who wanted to enter irregularly. The Afghans are to be rejected according to Lithuania.

According to information from the German Press Agency, rejections continue to exist from Germany to Poland. So far, the controls have been “relatively uncomplicated” and largely without traffic jams, says Andreas Roßkopf, chairman for the federal police at the police union. In the past two days, there have obviously still had agreements between the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Polish authorities to prevent postponing back and forth.

The center-left government in Warsaw ordered the controls in response to German border controls. Germany has been checking randomly on the border with Poland since October 2023 to stop irregular migration.

1,800 men and women in action

According to the Ministry, around 800 border guards, 300 police officers, 200 military police officers and 500 members of the volunteer home protection associations are involved in the Polish controls on both national borders. Men and women in Flecktarn with yellow west stop travelers.

At the Pomeelle border crossing on the A11 towards Szczecin, traffic runs smoothly. The Polish officials do not check on the highway, but in the parking lot of a petrol station on the border. Not all drivers are waved out. Traffic also rolls on the opposite side towards Germany. The federal police have set up a control route on the site of the customs office.

Federal Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) had more intensive border controls shortly after the new Federal Government started in May. At the same time, he ordered that asylum seekers can also be rejected at the border in the future. The rejections from Germany are a stimulus topic in Poland – also because right -wing activists have spread the rumor, German officials transported asylum seekers who have not been in Poland before.

The activists have withdrawn from the border crossings, but were on the road with mobile patrols in the border area, said Robert Bakiewicz of the “Movement of the Borders” of the dpa. It is also about checking the work of border protection. It is good that instead of these civil authorities, Polish officials are now on the border, says Heiko Teggatz, deputy federal chairman of the German Police Union.

Dobrindt offered his Polish counterpart to joint controls on the German side of the common border. So far, however, this offer has not been accepted. For July 18, the Federal Minister of the Interior invited his counterpart from France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic as well as the EU Commissioner for the Interior and Migration, Magnus Brunner, to a “migration summit” on the Zugspitze.

Government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said that the goal was a better EU external border protection. The internal controls are just a temporary measure. “We don’t want permanent border controls,” he emphasized. One is well aware of the effects of these controls.

The chairwoman of the Greens parliamentary group, Britta Haßelmann, wrote on X: “The introduction of Polish border controls are the result of national solo on all German borders.”

Not all commuters and buyers are convinced

Andreas Ewald from Berlin, who buys in Osinow Dolny on the “Polenmarkt Hohenwutzen”, says that he no longer employs employees from Poland in his glass and building cleaning company. Because for them the journey because of the federal police controls is so complex that it is no longer worth it. He does not believe that these controls can contain irregular migration. He says: “The gangs behind it, they find other ways.”

Oliver from Eberswalde is once a week for working in Schwedt and then drives to Poland to refuel. He says of the controls: “They actually bother me less, is reasonably good for the security that less is smuggled.” It is only difficult if the border guards do not speak German and you do not know what exactly they wanted. But as long as only the papers are checked and not the trunk, that’s okay, says the young man.