Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Saturday announced plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum. He backed his decision by claiming on Sunday on social media platform X that Finland had already done the same.

"A temporary suspension in asylum claims was introduced in Finland in May. This is a response to the hybrid war declared on the European Union (and especially Poland) by Moscow and Minsk, which consists in organizing the massive transfer of migrants across our borders," he wrote.

The legality of Finland's migration strategy is debatable. Yet, "if Poland passes the same law, it would paradoxically improve the current situation along the Polish-Belarusian border," said Dominika Pszczółkowska, a political scientist and migration researcher.

Finland's law includes 'a number of limitations'

Finland’s emergency law on migration authorizes pushbacks, like in Poland. Except the law includes "a number of limitations: it is only valid for one year, it does not concern children, or people with disabilities, or other kinds of vulnerable people," said Pszczółkowska.

Amnesty International issued a report declaring Finland's law inconsistent with EU regulation, and dangerous to the rights of people seeking safety. However, compared to current Polish practices, the Finnish law may be more humane. "These rules have yet to be put into practice," said Pszczółkowska, "but it looks like the Finnish authorities are doing everything to remain within human rights law, while sending a message that they will be doing more to filter asylum seekers."

The Finnish legislation was actually passed in July 2024, not last May as Tusk wrote, after an unusually high number of asylum seekers arrived on Finland’s territory at the end of 2023 and at the beginning of 2024. The Finnish authorities blamed the Russian Federation for orchestrating the increase in arrivals, accusing it of "weaponizing migration" as part of retaliation for Finland's accession to NATO.

"Poland [which shares a border with Belarus and Russia], wants to pass the same law as in Finland, because it is in a similar situation and the Nordic country is an obvious reference," said the researcher.

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State of emergency

Successive Polish governments have also accused Russia and Belarus of luring migrants to the border with Poland and forcing them to cross. As thousands of migrants began arriving at Poland's border, the country's conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government at the time tightened up its migration policy.

It began by declaring a state of emergency in the area between September 2, 2021 and July 1, 2022. Human rights activists and reporters from humanitarian aid groups and members of civil society were prosecuted by Polish law if they were found helping refugees. The state of emergency coincided with the completion of a 187 kilometer fence along the border with Belarus.

Then there were the reports of pushbacks taking place in the area. "We have cases of pregnant women or people with broken legs being pushed back," said Pszczółkowska.

Over 115 migrants died while trying to cross into the EU irregularly from Belarus. The national debate on migration was further inflamed in July after a Polish soldier was stabbed by a migrant who thrust a knife through the steel fence along the border with Belarus.  

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'The devil is in the detail'

The Polish Undersecretary of State in the Polish Ministry of Interior Maciej Duszczyk defended his country’s new migratory strategy in a radio interview on Monday, saying the new migration strategy in Poland sought to seek a balance between national security and European values. "When Polish soldiers are getting attacked along the Belarusian border; it has nothing to do with asylum law, it has to do with security," he said.

The situation is "very political," and Tusk is "focusing the debate on security but not on the broader factors of migration, like integration or the labor market," said Pszczółkowska. When asked whether Poland was evolving toward a Hungarian model for migration rather than a Finnish one, the researcher responded that, "the devil is in the details, and it’s really going to depend on how the new law is enforced."