EU wants Poland, Lithuania and Latvia to hold asylum seekers

The EU executive has said that Poland, Lithuania and Latvia should be allowed to hold people in special asylum processing centres at the border with Belarus for up to 16 weeks in an emergency loosening of standards in order to deal with what it calls a hybrid attack from Alexander Lukashenko's regime.

The European Commission's top officials said the three EU member states needed flexibility to deal with an unprecedented situation, but critics said that Brussels was building walls of fortress Europe ever higher.

Under EU rules, member states have three to six days to register an asylum claim, or 10 in exceptional circumstances, while the whole process, including appeals, is supposed to be completed in four weeks.

The EU accused Belarusian authoritarian leader of luring desperate people from the Middle East to Belarus and then transporting them to the EU border in the hope of destabilising the bloc. Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia have experienced a surge in people arriving from the Middle East via Belarus to claim asylum. About 10,000 people are believed to have reached Germany via Belarus, while some tried to cross the Channel.

The Commission's proposal to loosen European asylum law came after Poland snubbed EU officials by voting to extend a ban on journalists in an exclusion zone on the Polish-Belarusian border.

She repeated on Wednesday that the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, has repeatedly called for the government of Poland to allow media and NGOs access to the border region. It is important that media can have access, and we are not victims of rumours that can't be clarified. On Tuesday, Polish MPs rejected a proposal from the Senate to allow media access to the zone, voting for a long-term ban to replace current emergency measures. Poland s interior ministry said the ban on independent observers would facilitate the construction of a 5.5 metre high wall on the border with Belarus.

The European commissioner didn't respond directly to questions about the EU compatibility of a Polish law from October that NGOs say allows Polish border guards to push back people seeking asylum, in violation of international law.

Johansson said that the situation is unprecedented at the borders and it has been difficult for the member states most concerned at the borders to deal with it. They asked us to give legal clarifications on what is possible to do and what is not possible to do, and we are coming with these legal clarifications with our proposal today and I expect them to comply with it. She said that the EU does not allow pushbacks, but member states have a duty to prevent unauthorised entries.

She said on Wednesday that the latest proposal protected fundamental rights, including the right to a fair process and non-refoulement, the right not to be returned to war or persecution.

The emergency rule change that must be approved by all EU member states would only apply in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland for six months.

As new arrivals of migrants into Belarus have ceased, and 1,872 Iraqi citizens are expected to be flown home, with more flights expected, according to EU officials. There are 10,000 people who are believed to be stranded in Belarus, while Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are facing numerous asylum clams.

The commission said that 7,831 people entered Latvia, Lithuania and Poland this year, compared to 257 for the whole of 2020. Poland received 6,730 requests for asylum, Lithuania 2,676 and Latvia 579.

Critics argued that the emergency changes were unnecessary and accused the commission of being influenced by Poland's nationalist government, led by the Law and Justice PiS party.

Juan Fernando L pez Aguilar, a Spanish socialist MEP who chairs the European Parliament's justice and home affairs committee, described the measures as excessive and disproportionate. The decrease in number of people seeking asylum at the EU's border with Belarus in no way justify allowing governments to abandon their obligations under international law to give access to asylum. There is no reason to blind eye to the illegal practice of pushbacks.

It is very worrying that the commission will dance to the tune of the PiS government's demands to suspend the EU's asylum rules and even more so after a vote in the Polish parliament yesterday to ban media and NGO from accessing the border area. According to Erin McKay, of Oxfam, stopping, detaining and criminalising people trying to find safety in Europe breaks international and European asylum law. The detention of migrants at EU borders puts politics over people's lives.