A front of migratory tension opens between Germany and Poland. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz charged Warsaw with the alleged granting of visas under bribery at Polish consulates in Africa and Asia, in the context of the current wave of illegal border entries of migrants into Germany Polish and Czech. “I don’t want Poland to simply give way [to migrants] and then we are the ones who have to discuss the asylum policy – said Scholz at an event in Nuremberg-. Whoever arrives in Poland must be registered there and their application must be processed there, and not that, on top of that, they sell visas for money and aggravate the problem”.
The issue of corruption in the granting of work visas has upended the campaign for the elections that Poland will hold on October 15. The Government of the ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party claims that there are very few alleged cases – around 300, according to them – while the press and the opposition put the number at more than 200,000.
According to the ongoing investigation, Polish consulates in Egypt, India, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and Tajikistan, among other countries, delegated visa processing to local companies that, in coordination with Foreign Office officials in Warsaw, prioritized requests from those who paid bribes. According to the Polish press, 82,000 foreigners who obtained such a visa last year did not later work in Poland and moved to other countries.
Warsaw reacted with irritation to Scholz’s words about the case. The Minister of Culture, Piotr Glinski, cited him to “not interfere in the internal affairs of Poland”.
According to the German Federal Police, in the first half of 2023, 45,338 foreigners who had entered the country illegally through land, sea and airport borders were intercepted (56% more than in the same period last year), of which 12,331 they had entered through the German-Polish border. The majority are originally from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Georgia and Russia, and arrived via the Belarusian route. The impact of Polish visas on illegal entries into Germany is difficult to gauge, and could be a relatively lower impact.
In any case, Scholz’s government of social democrats, greens and liberals tightens the general tone on migration matters, since it is under pressure from the conservative opposition and from two border states – Brandenburg and Saxony – in the face of the increase in arrivals through the eastern border. Christian Democrats and regional leaders of other colors are calling for random police checks on the Polish and Czech borders, as there are already on the border with Austria. The Minister of the Interior, the social democrat Nancy Faeser, established them in November 2022 with prior notice in Brussels, and they will operate until November of this year.
So far, Scholz and Faeser have resisted introducing controls at the Polish and Czech borders, but there are signs they could be changing their minds. “There are many who arrive in Germany and Europe”, said the chancellor in Nuremberg, and warned of the possibility of new measures “depending on the situation” at the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic.
The rise in irregular migration flows to Europe threatens to further strain relations between particularly affected countries. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has written a letter to German Chancellor Scholz and reproached him that her Government, “without coordinating with the Italian Government, has allegedly decided to support with significant funds non-governmental organizations that are dedicated to to the reception of irregular immigrants in Italian territory and to rescues in the Mediterranean Sea”.
Berlin already irritated Rome a few days ago when it suspended “until further notice” the voluntary mechanism for receiving asylum seekers – created last year by the EU – arriving in Germany from Italy.
According to Frontex, the agency that monitors the EU’s external borders, in the first eight months of 2023 there were 232,350 people who crossed the border illegally in Europe, the highest figure for the period from January to August since 2016. The increase is mainly due to the higher number of arrivals in Italy via the central Mediterranean, Frontex clarifies. Since the beginning of the year, 133,000 people disembarked, while in the same period of 2022 there were 69,800.
