interview
Introduction of border controls
Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Bartoszewski: “This is not how you treat partners”
A German policeman at the border control on the bridge between Frankfurt (Oder) and Slubice in Poland
© DPA
From Monday, Germany wants to introduce border controls. Also with Poland. A heavy strain on relations, says Deputy Foreign Minister Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski.
We will postpone the planned border controls to Poland impact?
Negative. And we were a little surprised because we had not been informed in any way beforehand. We found out about it when the German Interior Minister made the decision public. That is a somewhat unusual way of dealing with your neighbors.
How will it affect the everyday life of people living between Poland and Germany travel, practically influence?
Also negative. Our transport industry is one of the largest in Europe, and a lot of trucks cross the border every day. This means a big disruption. Germany has de facto decided to suspend the Schengen rules. We cannot be happy about that.
Some are already talking about an end to Schengen.
No, but that is the end of the spirit of Schengen and European cooperation. We expect urgent consultations at EU level. You cannot surprise your neighbours with decisions like this. I know that there will be a sharp reaction from Austria too. That is not how you treat partners.
© Albert Zawada / Picture Alliance
To person
Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski68, has been Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister in Donald Tusk’s government since 2023. Bartoszewski worked for a long time as a historian in Great Britain, has been a member of the Polish parliament since 2019 and belongs to the PSL party, which is part of Tusk’s governing coalition. He is the son of former Foreign Minister and Auschwitz survivor Władysław Bartoszewski.
How are people in Poland reacting?
People see this negatively because they understand that the controls will mean huge queues at the borders. Tens of thousands of Poles and Germans are crossing the border because we also have close cooperation at the regional level. In the federal states that border Poland, there are many people who live in Poland and work in Germany, or many Germans who shop in Poland. Very strong ties have been created, and these measures are making people’s lives more complicated.
There is a lot of debate in Germany about how rejections should work in practice. Will Poland accept people at the border who are sent back by the German federal police?
We control the EU’s eastern border, the border with Belarus. We stop the illegal migrants coming from there. We will continue to do so. There have been cases where Germany has returned illegal migrants to Poland, and we have protested against that. Unlike Germany, however, we do not suffer from such a large influx of illegal migrants, because unlike Germany, we did not say, as Angela Merkel did in 2015: “Welcome, all migrants can come.” The problems for Germany and Europe began at this point. Many Germans are unhappy with this, and this was reflected in the recent state elections.
The situation on your eastern border was at times very tense because Belarus de facto sent refugees across the border. How serious is the situation at the moment?
We have reduced the number of illegal crossing attempts by 90 percent. We are now only talking about dozens of attempts a day, not thousands as we were a few months ago. Some are successful, but we stop most illegal migrants. Because our border is very secure, more and more are currently coming from the north, i.e. via Lithuania and Latvia.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser claims that the border controls will protect Germany “from the acute dangers of Islamist terrorism and serious crime.” Do you share this opinion?
If, as in the case of Solingen, you allowed an Islamist or terrorist to live in Germany for several years, if the Interior Ministry, despite a verdict, was not able to find the person and deport him to his home country, then that is not an external problem, but an internal problem of Germany. There are very many people in Germany who could have links to terrorist groups. But many of them have been living in Germany for a very long time. Germany is not the only country that has these problems with very large minorities. There are these problems in France, Belgium and other countries too.
In recent years, German-Polish relations have been at a low point, but since this year there has been talk of a new beginning. How much of a strain does the Federal Government’s current decision put on relations?
Relations are significantly better than they have been for the last eight or nine years. We are cooperating with Germany, we have reactivated the “Weimar Triangle” with Germany and France, we have many common interests. Our relations are currently being negatively affected by the internal problems between the coalition partners of the German government.
The explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines is also a strain on German-Polish relations. The German side has accused Poland of being involved. It has also complained that Poland has not executed the European arrest warrant against the main Ukrainian suspect, Volodymyr S.
There is no evidence that we supported this group in any way. We had no knowledge of such activities. The man who is considered a suspect is not on Polish territory, so I cannot comment on that. From a Polish perspective, however, Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently summed it up when he said of the pipelines: Instead of complaining that they were destroyed, the Germans should think about the reasons why they were built in the first place.