Poland's Undersecretary of State, Maciej Duszczyk, has urged the European Commission to exempt Poland from the EU's new migration pact, citing alleged Russian and Belarusian involvement in orchestrating migrant flows to the bloc.
Poland’s Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of the Interior and Administration, Maciej Duszczyk, has called on the European Commission to exempt Poland from the border procedures outlined in the EU’s new migration pact. He accused Russia and Belarus of orchestrating migrant flows across the EU’s external borders as part of a hybrid attack.
Speaking on January 16 during a visit to the Polish-Belarusian border, Duszczyk warned that Belarus could exploit the pact to increase pressure on Poland’s borders. He cited ongoing hybrid attacks, where Belarus allegedly facilitates irregular migration to destabilize the EU.
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Russia and Belarus 'behind migrant trafficking'
"In the Mediterranean," he added, "there are criminal organizations behind migrant trafficking. We, on the other hand, have states to deal with, since Russian and Belarussian security services are behind this trafficking.
"If we were to apply the procedures established by the pact with the registration of all the migrants instead of the numbers that we are seeing now [about 30,000 attempt to enter the country illegally in 2024, Ed.], we would have hundreds of thousands of people pushing on this point of the border."
Duszczyk said that most migrants at this point are "young men" who arrived in Russia and Belarus with "student visas".
'Our priority is to close this
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artificial migration route'
"We are in contact with countries of origin and transit, since for us it is a priority to close this artificial migration route," the undersecretary continued.
"The communication from December of the European Commission that allows us to take special measures for the protection of border supports us."
However, pushbacks are not allowed by international law, which in turn the EU is obliged to respect.
"But what is the correct definition of pushback," Duszczyk asked. "Because many do not want to be registered in Poland. They want to go back to Belarus and try again, for example to arrive in Germany and not be pushed back there." He stressed that these aspects must be discussed at meetings between EU interior ministers.
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