What Aleksandr Lukashenko is currently doing with the refugees on the Polish border is “state smuggling and smuggling”, and the refugee movement he has organized is a “hybrid attack on the European Union”.
The ruler's actions in Minsk can hardly be described more clearly than government spokesman Steffen Seibert said in Berlin on Wednesday.
But the more difficult the humanitarian situation of the people in the border area between Poland and Belarus becomes, the more arguments are going on in German politics and society about what should and shouldn't be done.
Helene Bubrowski
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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Markus Wehner
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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This involves a whole bunch of questions: When it comes to humanitarian aid for asylum seekers, Germany does not want to act alone.
Since the matter affects the entire EU, Brussels must act, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry on Wednesday.
When it comes to the question of asylum, he points out that Poland, Lithuania or Latvia are initially responsible as the countries of arrival.
The efforts of Poland to prevent refugees from entering the country and thus the EU are particularly controversial.
While Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) offers Warsaw support and also considers the return of refugees to Belarus to be lawful, criticism is coming from the parties of the likely future traffic light coalition.
What Poland can refer to
This is especially true for the SPD and the Greens. "The push-backs from the Polish side are legally inadmissible," says domestic politician Lars Castelluci from the SPD parliamentary group of the FAZ leaves no doubt that it is a "despicable act" by Lukashenko. However, the EU has committed itself to complying with certain procedures. Nils Schmid, SPD foreign policy official, also regards the rejections as illegal. "The idea that illegal measures are used to protect the EU undermines what the EU and Poland as a member of the EU stand for," Schmid told Deutschlandfunk on Wednesday. The Green Group leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt had previously rejected “inhumane push-backs”.
Legally, the situation is complicated.
The German government asserts that Poland has the right and the duty to protect the EU's external border.
But it starts with the fact that it is unclear what border protection actually means.
Is protection the opposite of uncontrolled immigration, so is it just a matter of registering all arrivals?
Or is it a real fortress Europe?
In any case, it is clear that EU member states are allowed to erect fences at the external borders.
However, the European Asylum Procedure Directive states that European asylum law applies to all applications for international protection that are made in the territory of a Member State “including at the border”.
Is it enough if a refugee calls out to a border guard over the fence that he is seeking asylum?