Neither more nor less a “violation of the principles of cooperation governing the transfer of people”, according to Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk indicated on Monday that he would raise with his German counterpart Olaf Scholz the question of an “unacceptable” incident during which, according to Warsaw, German police officers took a family of Afghan origin to the Polish side of the border and abandoned her in a parking lot. The Tagesschau, the leading television news in Germany, gives a somewhat different version with the testimony of the police.
According to images published by the local news website Chojna24.pl, taken up by national media, a German police van entered Polish territory on Friday morning and left five foreigners in a parking lot in Osinow Dolny (west). , two adults and three children. According to witnesses cited by the site, the van immediately left for Germany. The foreigners were subsequently taken into custody by the police and Polish border guards were alerted by passers-by.
“In a moment I will speak with Chancellor Scholz about the unacceptable incident involving German police and a migrant family on our side of the border,” Donald Tusk wrote on X. “The matter must be clarified in detail,” he added.
During the day on Monday, border guards said they had contacted the German side “to clarify the circumstances of the incident”.
The action carried out by the German police took place “in violation of the principles of cooperation between the two services and of the law governing the transfer of persons”, they affirmed on X, stressing that “the German services cannot take such decisions in an arbitrary manner.
Polish Deputy Interior Minister Czeslaw Mroczek declared, for his part, that his country was “not going to tolerate this kind of step”. “Everything must be done in compliance with the law and procedures,” he insisted, quoted by the PAP agency. Police officials from both countries are due to discuss the case on Tuesday.
Controls reinstated during Euro 2024
On the German side, federal police said that, as part of internal border controls temporarily reintroduced during Euro 2024 football, officers arrested an Afghan family of five near Altmädewitz in Brandenburg, according to Tageschau .
The family had Polish asylum certificates for the adults and Polish identity cards for the children and did not seek asylum in Goethe’s homeland. So she had no reason to stay there. According to the German media, Polish border guards were informed via the Joint Center in Swiecko that the Afghan nationals were going to be handed over to them.
“As there was no response from the Polish side for several hours, (…) the officials decided to take the family with a patrol to the German-Polish border,” reports the television news. The police then took the children who were not feeling well to the pharmacy in the town of Osinow Dolny, Poland. And in an unfortunate combination of circumstances, the children’s mother had forgotten her cell phone at the German police station where she returned before being brought back to Poland to her family.
In any case, the incident will be discussed during a meeting between Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak and his German counterpart Nancy Faeser, according to the spokesperson for the Polish ministry.
