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IMMIGRATION

Germany rules out closing Polish frontier to stem Belarus migrant flow

Germany has no plans to close its border to Poland despite a sharp increase in asylum seekers arriving via Belarus, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Wednesday. However, tighter border checks could still be on the horizon.

State police conduct checks at the Polish-German border
State police conduct checks at the Polish-German border. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Stefan Sauer

Seehofer told reporters the outgoing government under Chancellor Angela Merkel had “no intention” of taking such a drastic step which he said would also be “legally questionable”.

In a letter to his Polish counterpart Mariusz Kaminski seen by AFP Tuesday, Seehofer proposed increasing joint patrols along its border with Poland in response to rising numbers of migrants coming via Belarus.

Seehofer said he had not yet received a response from Warsaw but praised its “very strong initiatives” to stem the flow of new arrivals.

A powerful German police union this week called for stepped-up checks at the border given the influx via Belarus, which the interior ministry said had reached around 5,700 since the start of the year.

Seehofer repeated EU accusations that the Belarusian authorities are flying migrants from the Middle East and Africa to Minsk and then sending them into the bloc on foot in retaliation for sanctions imposed over a crackdown on the opposition.

He said Merkel would be pressing the issue at a European Union summit this week.

READ ALSO: How Germany is proposing to tighten controls on the Polish border

But he stressed “the key to the solution of the problem lies in Moscow” given Russia’s outsized economic and political influence on Belarus.

The surge in people crossing illegally over the EU’s eastern frontier with Belarus has placed major strains on member states unaccustomed to dealing with large-scale arrivals. 

Poland has drawn criticism for its hardline stance that has seen border guards push migrants back across the border with Belarus.

Seehofer said that while Berlin was concerned about the issue, it bore no comparison to the 2015-16 influx when more than one million asylum seekers arrived in Germany.

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IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

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