EU Hopes Poland To Consider Supervision At Border With Belarus - Commissioner

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 06th October, 2021) The European Union hopes Poland will consider deploying liability officers at the border with Belarus to ensure that Warsaw's treatment of people trying to cross the border complies with EU laws, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said in an interview with Zeit Online.

A few days ago, Amnesty International suggested that Poland may have pushed migrants back to the Belarusian border unlawfully. Poland has been tightening security measures on its border with Belarus as cases of migrants trying to make it over to the EU have increased since the beginning of the year.

"I have proposed that Poland install liability officers at the borders. Doing so would be important for both transparency and for showing that this is a European border," the commissioner said.

"I hope they will consider it," she replied when asked if Poland agrees to this.

An EU delegation will travel to Poland this week to "continue the dialogue," the commissioner said.

"As long as there's no transparency, it will be very difficult to clarify that Poland is complying with EU law.

That's why I'm focusing on dialogue. I told the minister that we would support them in protecting the borders, but for this, we need transparency. It's important that media and NGOs will have access so that we have knowledge of how they are actually protecting the border," Johansson said.

The commissioner noted that Belarusian President Alexander Lukahsenko is the one to blame for the situation at the border.

In recent months, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania have reported an influx of migrants trying to cross into the EU from Belarus and accused Minsk of facilitating illegal migration in order destabilize the bloc in retaliation for sweeping sanctions. In late September, Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said that his country has registered 9,400 attempts to cross its border illegally since August, but prevented 8,200 of them.

In a recent interview with CNN, Lukashenko rejected allegations that he was trying to exact revenge upon the EU by sending migrants toward the borders.