Freedom of movement in the EU received another nail in its coffin yesterday after Poland became the latest European country to introduce checks along its shared borders with fellow member states. As of next Monday, Warsaw will start enforcing border controls at crossings shared with Germany and Lithuania. 

The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that he felt compelled to introduce border checks in particular to ‘reduce the uncontrolled flows of migrants across the Polish-German border to a minimum’. The source of Tusk’s angst is the tougher border regime introduced by new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz less than two months ago. Under the new measures, German border guards have been given the power to stop and turn back anyone trying to enter the country without the correct paperwork. The federal police have also been granted the power to reject asylum seekers at the border if they have grounds to.

Contrary to Tusk’s accusation, the flow of migrants has been far from ‘uncontrolled’: according to the German authorities, just 3,488 migrants have been turned away at the country’s shared border with Poland. But Tusk’s barb speaks to the tension between Germany and Poland that has been growing for some time. 

Merz entered Berlin’s chancellery in May off the back of a violence-soaked election campaign in which the debate over migration raged thanks to the inflammatory, yet effective, rhetoric of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. More than 3 million asylum........

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