Members of the Polish parliament should reject a bill that would allow the government to temporarily suspend the right to asylum at Poland’s border with Belarus, Human Rights Watch said today. The European Commission should act to uphold European Union treaties and member states’ obligations, including to provide access to the asylum procedure.
“Poland, which currently holds the EU presidency, should lead by example and ensure that people fleeing war and persecution are given the opportunity to have their asylum claims individually assessed,” said Lydia Gall, senior Europe and Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This bill flies in the face of Poland’s international and EU obligations and should be voted down.”
The bill risks formalizing ongoing unlawful and abusive pushbacks at Poland’s border with Belarus. It would expose people to abuses and inhumane conditions in Belarus, in violation of the principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits returns to a country where people may face torture or inhumane or degrading treatment.
If passed, it would allow the Polish government to suspend the right to seek asylum for a period of up to 60 days along specific sections of its border. Extensions beyond this period could be authorized with parliamentary approval and renewed indefinitely. Exceptions would be made for vulnerable people, including unaccompanied children, pregnant women, those who require special treatment due to their age or health, Belarusian citizens, and anyone who can “unequivocally prove they are at risk of suffering serious harm” if returned to Belarus.
Explanatory notes to the draft law say that border guards will assess who would qualify for exemptions. But the border guards are not trained or equipped to make such determinations, which should be made by the Office of Foreigners in Poland. And people seeking protection in Poland on the Belarus border have told Human Rights Watch that Polish border guards ignored their requests to seek asylum. This is in fact a long-standing concern and underscores that such an arrangement does not provide an adequate safeguard against refoulement.
Formally suspending the right to asylum could effectively completely seal off the Poland-Belarus border, where Polish authorities already engage in unlawful and abusive pushbacks, Human Rights Watch said.
In detailed observations on the draft law, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stressed that the nonrefoulement obligation applies in “all situations of people on the move” including “in the context of ‘instrumentalization’ or the so-called ‘weaponization’ of migrants and refugees” and requires Poland to ensure access to asylum procedures. UNHCR noted that access to territory and asylum procedures are necessary prerequisites for any vulnerability screenings, and expressed concerns whether an appeals procedure exists and whether border guards are adequately trained to make such screenings.
The Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said in a December statement that the draft law is inconsistent with the Polish Constitution, cements the pattern of unlawful pushbacks, and risks violating the ban on collective expulsions under international law. The proposed law would also violate the binding obligation on EU member states under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU to ensure the right to asylum.
The Polish government, in the explanatory notes, says that the authority to suspend the right to asylum is necessary because of what it calls instrumentalization of migrants by Belarus and Russia. In 2021, Belarus began facilitating visas to third-country nationals and encouraging, even forcing, their onward travel to Poland.
Human Rights Watch research from December 2024 indicates that the dynamics of immigration to Poland may indeed have shifted and that many people now travel first to Moscow on tourist or student visas, then make their way to Belarus and the border with Poland.
Nevertheless, Poland’s pushbacks without due process, collective expulsions, violate EU law, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Summary pushbacks constitute prohibited ill-treatment as does the violence people experience during these pushbacks, as affirmed by domestic and European Court of Human Rights judgments.
Human Rights Watch documented unlawful pushbacks from Poland to Belarus in 2021, 2022, and 2024, including violence and abuse toward migrants and asylum seekers stranded in Belarus as a result of Poland’s pushbacks. Adopting the law risks deepening those human rights abuses against migrants and asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch research since December 2024 shows that unlawful, and sometimes violent, pushbacks from Poland to Belarus continue. Twenty-two people interviewed said that they told Polish border officials that they wanted asylum, but that the guards instead took them to the border fence, without due process, and pushed them across to Belarus. They said the guards used pepper spray against them, abused them in other ways, and broke their phones.
The draft law builds on problematic laws and practices on asylum introduced by the previous Polish government, including giving legal cover for pushbacks, and the introduction of exclusion zones along the border preventing journalists, aid workers and independent experts from accessing the area. Aid workers have faced criminal charges under both the previous and current governments for assisting migrants trapped in the border area.
The European Commission has remained largely silent regarding Poland’s unlawful pushbacks. Instead, the Commission appeared to provide political cover for unlawful practices at EU’s borders in a December 2024 communication outlining treaty provisions that it claimed member states could invoke to derogate from EU asylum rules under article 72 of the EU Treaty. In fact, the nonrefoulement obligation forms a part of customary international law, which means it is binding on states at all times, and cannot be derogated from by states.
Rather than condoning member states’ rights abuses at EU’s borders, the Commission, as the legal guardian of the treaties, should make it clear that it would initiate legal action—infringement proceedings—against Poland for violating EU asylum law if the law is adopted, Human Rights Watch said.
“Claims of instrumentalized migration don’t absolve Poland and EU institutions of their human rights obligations,” Gall said. “Brussels should call on Warsaw to immediately scrap the bill and halt pushbacks.”