The Nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), which won an outright majority in 2015, has seen its grip on parliamentary power weakening. It is also embroiled in conflict with the European Commission over the rule of law and faces widespread opposition, especially in urban areas, for its position on cultural issues.
Set against this backdrop, the drama played out on the country’s eastern border with Belarus – while unwelcome by Poland and grim for all involved – can be seen as a helpful distraction for the ruling PiS.
“This migration crisis is very useful for the party from the point of view of domestic political agenda as they are in trouble at the moment. And they are already in trouble for a long time, the parliamentary majority is getting thinner and thinner,” said Piotr Buras, the European head of the Council’s Warsaw office on foreign relations, told CNN.
Meanwhile, rising inflation is causing financial pain for many in Poland, and polls indicate support for the government has waned in recent weeks, Buras said.
“I don’t want to downplay the situation because it is risky and serious, quite a difficult political situation because it involves a security conflict and a humanitarian crisis…,” he said.
Judy Dempsey, editor of thinktank Carnegie Europe’s Strategic Europe blog, agreed that the crisis is “playing very well” for the ruling party.
Amid protests over the death of the pregnant woman, he said, support for the government has fallen. But Dempsey added: “With this crisis at the Belarusian-Polish border, law and justice are now seen as champions of defending Polish sovereignty and of course protecting Europe.”
emergency situation
The decision of Poland’s government – which also opposed taking in refugees during the 2015 migrant crisis – to stay firmly on border security has garnered widespread domestic support.
Meanwhile, opposition politicians are in a difficult position because they cannot say they do not want to protect the border, Buras said, although he has criticized some of the measures taken by the government.
Warsaw has tried to keep the crisis at bay by blocking the Polish side of the border for journalists, aid workers and doctors amid an extended state of emergency. This has not always worked to the advantage of the Polish government: some of the most compelling images of the crisis, such as Polish border forces using water cannons on desperate migrants, were captured from the Belarusian side of the border, where international journalists were able to were to work. The government is now trying to pass a law that would give it new powers when the state of emergency ends next month.
The crisis has forced the EU to withdraw from Poland, at a time of increasingly bitter disputes between the European Commission and Poland over the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.
Now, the European Commission and major European powers are speaking out in support of Poland as a defender of the bloc’s eastern border.
German government spokesman Stefan Seibert tweeted on Wednesday in a call with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying Germany stood in “full solidarity” with Poland over the border crisis.
PIS members have openly expressed their hope that the European Commission will “show more understanding for Poland and apply a lighter approach to the issues of law caused by this crisis at the border,” Buras said.
Nonetheless, the political situation is “very unstable”, he said, and the Polish government risks finding itself surrounded and unable to back down by its fierce rhetoric on border security.
Dempsey said that if the crisis ends, with the repatriation of migrants no longer on the border, the extent to which the Polish government benefits from nationalist fervor will depend on how effective the opposition is.
Another factor to consider is those within Poland who do not share the government’s desire to keep migrants out, she said.
“We must not forget that there are civil society movements and NGOs and civilized people who want these migrants to be treated properly, (want) to reach to the limit to give them help,” she said. “Maybe it will have the opposite effect. The Polish government prohibited reporting and did not allow humanitarian agencies or the media to cross the border. So if this crisis subsides, Law and Justice will undoubtedly try to keep the nationalist fervor going. going on, but it cannot be sustained.”
EU supports Poland at borders
The clear losers in this crisis are migrants, mostly from the Middle East, who paid smugglers large sums of money on false promises to enter Poland illegally and travel deep into Europe in search of a better life.
Lukashenko’s spokeswoman Natalya Ismont said on Thursday that some 7,000 migrants are in Belarus. According to Belarus state news agency BelTA, those who insist on opening the humanitarian corridor in Western Europe mainly to Germany, Eismont said.
According to the Polish Border Guard, more than 35,000 attempts have been made to illegally enter Poland from Belarus since the beginning of August. As of Thursday, seven people had been found dead on the Polish side of the border.
Poland has been criticized by international aid organisations, which say it is violating international law to repatriate asylum seekers to Belarus instead of accepting their applications for international security. Poland stands by its actions, however, saying they are legal.
Western officials have accused Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko of creating a crisis to destabilize the bloc as retaliation for sanctions on human rights abuses. The unanswered question is how Belarus will benefit from the standoff on the EU’s eastern border.
EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said on Monday that EU leaders agreed on Monday to implement a new package of sanctions on Belarus targeting “all involved” in the easing of the situation at the Polish border. expressed.
The EU has also made it clear that its aid will cover humanitarian aid and migrants returning home – but not resettlement within its borders. In a phone call with Lukashenko on Wednesday, Merkel underscored the need to ensure “humanitarian care and opportunities for return” for those affected, her spokeswoman said.
Germany’s acting foreign minister Heiko Maas has insisted the EU “will not be blackmailed by criminals like Lukashenko” and said the bloc seeks to trace migrants’ countries of origin to repatriate their citizens.
Dempsey criticized the EU’s response, saying the bloc failed to agree on a common, cohesive policy on migration after the 2015 refugee crisis and is now paying a price for it.
He said that this crisis will undoubtedly be followed by another crisis. “Migrants or refugees in search of security or a better life will be re-exploited and Europeans still will not make a proper, humane, pragmatic policy – and building too heavy fortifications is not a solution.”
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Some observers have pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarus’ most important ally, joining the turmoil. The gathering of Russian military forces near Ukraine’s eastern border has raised concerns about the prospect of a wider geopolitical crisis.
Asked about any threat of war in an interview published Thursday by the German newspaper Bild, Moraviki said he expected all sides to remain calm, but said nothing could be ruled out.
“Lukashenko and Putin are clearly pursuing a strategy to destabilize the West, to destabilize it. We don’t know what else they are planning,” the Polish prime minister told Bild. “It is also possible that the crisis at the border is merely a distraction from the new military strikes Putin is preparing in Ukraine.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday strongly rejected any suggestion that Putin was using so-called “hybrid war” tactics in Europe. “Russia does not wage a hybrid war. We completely reject it,” Peskov told reporters.
Lukashenko’s government has also repeatedly denied the claims that the border crisis has created.
Interviewed by CNN on Thursday, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Meki said allegations by European countries that Belarus had carried out the standoff were a “misassessment of the situation”.
Radoslaw Sikorski, a member of the European Parliament and former Polish foreign minister and defense minister, told CNN’s Hala Gorani that Lukashenko’s gamble on the migrant crisis could backfire.
“Lukashenko is trying to replicate what Turkish President Erdogan did, except that there were actually millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, and it was really a huge drain on Turkey’s resources and the EU of that cost. Some agreed to pay. Mr. Lukashenko has imported his migrants on purpose,” said Sikorsky, who is also a senior fellow at Harvard.
While Lukashenko will see the fact that he is getting calls from Merkel as “a breakthrough for him”, Sikorsky said, the crisis could ultimately cost him more than any fleeting legitimacy he has received.
Sikorsky said the actions taken by the EU and Middle East governments to stop the flow of migrants into Belarus are starting to show results, and only a small number are passing through the EU.
“I think, eventually Lukashenko will have to conclude that this is a bigger problem for him than the EU,” he said.
CNN’s Antonia Mortensen contributed reporting from Bialystok, Poland. Friedrich Pleizen, Anna Chernova, Zahra Ullah and Matthew Chance also contributed to this report.