EU member states should be given leeway to close their borders to asylum seekers crossing from Russia and Belarus to combat Russian efforts to “weaponise” migration, the European Commission has said.
States beside Russia and its ally Belarus have claimed asylum seekers are being flown from Africa and the Middle East and then transported to EU borders and pushed across in an effort to destabilise those states.
In response Polish prime minister Donald Tusk announced earlier this year he planned to shut the country’s border with Belarus to asylum seekers, following a similar approach taken by Finland to close its border with Russia.
In a decision on Wednesday, the commission gave the green light for member states to curtail the rights of asylum seekers crossing from Russia or Belarus.
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Henna Virkkunen, commission vice-president for democracy and security, said the “exceptional” nature of the weaponisation of migration by Russia, permitted countries to respond with temporary emergency measures. “We know that we have really moved to the next level of threat when we speak about our eastern border,” she said.
Russian and Belarusian authorities were “equipping” migrants with “devices” to cross EU borders, she said. The Finnish commissioner said there had also been instances of border guards being attacked.
The commission said the number of asylum seekers crossing into the EU from Belarus had increased by 66 per cent this year, with the Polish border being one of the main points of entry. The EU executive said this was in part due to Belarusian authorities “facilitating crossings”, by equipping migrants with ladders and other assistance.
More than 90 per cent of migrants coming into the EU through Belarus had previously travelled on a Russian student or tourist visa, which the commission said indicated Russia was also facilitating the migrant flows.
Ms Virkkunen said in such exceptional circumstances EU states “may limit the right to asylum in these situations, but in strict conditions and in legal limits”. The commissioner said limits on the right to claim asylum had to be “very clearly defined” and temporary in nature. She did not directly respond to questions about whether this cleared countries to push back migrants over the border into Russia or Belarus.
“This is an attack against the whole of the European Union when we speak about our eastern border and the things that are happening there. We have already been witnessing this for three years and it is getting worse all the time,” she said. Ms Virkkunen said the shift was a security matter, rather than a change in migration or asylum policy.
In a statement, the commission said emergency measures now open to EU states could amount to “serious interferences with fundamental rights such as the right to asylum and related guarantees”. As such they would have to be proportionate, temporary and “limited to what is strictly necessary in clearly defined cases,” it said.
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