Poland Urges EU to Embrace Its 18-Month Asylum Freeze

Poland wants the EU to legalize temporary asylum suspensions during engineered mass migration, after keeping its own Belarus border freeze for 18 months.

Poland stopped registering asylum applications from migrants entering from Belarus in March 2025, presenting the move as a temporary emergency response to what authorities saw as a Russian- and Belarusian-driven push to destabilize the country. The suspension, however, has remained in force for 18 months, and Poland is now urging the 27-nation bloc to allow similar temporary suspensions of asylum applications during episodes of what it calls "instrumentalized" mass migration elsewhere in the EU.

The policy was billed as temporary but became a template. On Sept. 16, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EU executive would propose a new "European emergency response framework" for "engineered and weaponized" mass migration, allowing "flexibility" in standard procedures for a limited time. Deputy interior minister Maciej Duszczyk told the AP that what Poland has been saying for a year and a half is "now becoming mainstream in the EU," calling it "the Polish solution." He credited the July Ceuta crisis, in which more than 70,000 people suddenly crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave, with making the EU realize other members face similar border shocks.

Since 2021, EU authorities have accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of weaponizing migration by luring people to his country as an easier entry point than the Mediterranean routes. Critics say the new framework could legitimize curtailing asylum EU-wide. Dutch MEP Tineke Strik told the AP that if the Polish model is normalized as the default policy, "it simply has been legalized," undermining the core of asylum law. Michael O'Flaherty, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, said the idea "worries" him because it "can very easily cross the line into a violation of international law," citing the non-refoulement principle born of the postwar refugee system.

Duszczyk maintains the suspension is fully compatible with international law, saying vulnerable categories — pregnant women, children, and those facing persecution in Belarus — can still apply, and that "each person who appears on the border has the right to speak to the Polish border guards." The Polish ombudsman and NGOs contradict him. Karolina Czerwinska of the Association for Legal Intervention said "visibly pregnant women might stand a chance, but in the case of sick people or teenagers who are minors, their arguments are typically undermined." Human rights groups were also surprised the Commission acted only three months after the EU's new Pact on Migration and Asylum took effect, which already allowed deviation from standard procedures in border crises.

Key details remain unknown: von der Leyen did not specify which procedures would be made flexible, and the European Commission did not respond to AP requests to list them. It is unclear what form the framework would take, whether it needs approval from the EU Parliament and member-state leaders, and how soon it could take effect. According to Duszczyk, the Commission is expected to give more details at an interior ministers summit on Oct. 1, with discussions continuing at a European Council summit later that month. Rights groups warn that whatever is decided will shape whether the right to ask for asylum remains a guaranteed first step before any return across the bloc.