Before introducing controls at the border with Germany, Poland's government wants to crack down on ultra-right-wing vigilante groups that organize patrols there. No one who breaks the law at the border will go unpunished, Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak wrote on X. "All cases of insulting officers, obstructing their work and usurping authority in recent days have been documented and forwarded to the public prosecutor's office." The Polish state will not tolerate arbitrariness and intimidation.
In response to German border controls, Poland plans to temporarily introduce its own controls at the German-Polish border from next Monday. Germany has already been carrying out random checks at the border with Poland since October 2023 to stop irregular migration. Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) ordered more intensive border controls shortly after the new federal government took office in May. At the same time, he ordered that asylum seekers could also be turned back at the border in future.
Rejections are a hot topic for Poland's right-wingers
Rejections from the western neighboring country are a hot topic in Poland and grist to the mill of the right-wing conservative opposition party PiS and the ultra-right. A newly founded "Movement for the Defence of Borders" is calling for the organization of self-appointed patrols at border crossings with Germany. Behind this is the right-wing radical Robert Bakiewicz, who is well-known in Poland and organizes annual right-wing marches in Warsaw on Polish Independence Day. According to the magazine "Polityka", Bakiewicz uses his network of so-called independence marches for recruitment.
The initiative's website advertises for volunteers to take part in patrols from June 27 to July 6. "The German authorities are pushing migrants across the border and the Polish state is not responding," it says. That is why they are looking for "courageous, responsible and committed people to serve with us at the border."
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