Poland reintroduced border checks with Germany and Lithuania at midnight of July 8 in a temporary move aimed at curbing unauthorised migration.

The controls will remain in place until August 5, the Interior Ministry said. They will cover 52 locations on the German border, including 16 with permanent checks and 13 sites along the Lithuanian frontier, with two fixed control points.

Polish border guards, supported by police and territorial defence troops, will conduct random inspections based on risk analysis, focusing in particular on vans and multi-passenger vehicles.

“These checks will not resemble pre-Schengen controls,” border guard spokesperson Lieutenant Konrad Szwed told PAP. “There will be no barriers or fencing. Cars will pass freely, and only some will be stopped for document and luggage checks.”

The government said the measures respond to a growing threat of irregular border crossings. Data from the Interior Ministry show that from January 1 to June 29, Polish border forces recorded 15,022 attempts to cross into the country illegally from Belarus. Around 5% of these individuals made it past border defences and were not apprehended immediately.

The pressure on Poland’s eastern flank has shifted, however, after Poland introduced a no-go zone along the border with Belarus with heavy presence of uniformed services, including the military. Meanwhile, Lithuania and Latvia have reported a sharp increase in attempted crossings.

According to Polish authorities, Lithuanian services have seen a more than threefold rise, while Latvia reports over twice the number of attempts. Polish guards detained 412 people along the Lithuanian border this year through June 29, nearly matching the total for all of 2024.

Meanwhile, over 4,600 unauthorised entries into Germany from Poland were recorded in the first half of 2025, leading to criticism that the government is responding to a trumped-up threat for fear of losing political points.

Ukrainian nationals accounted for 40% of those cases, with others arriving from Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Georgia and Colombia. Of those who crossed into Germany illegally, more than 850 had previously transited Belarus, according to Polish data.

The Interior Ministry said the renewed checks on the German border also reflect a need to verify legal grounds for taking back migrants under EU rules. Since May 8, Germany has refused asylum requests from individuals arriving from another EU country and has issued more return decisions for migrants entering via Poland.

Germany began its own controls on the Polish border in October 2023, citing security and migration concerns. These were due to expire in September but are expected to be extended, Tusk said. Tighter enforcement has led to more migrants being turned back at the border for lacking valid entry documents.

Amid reports of far-right activists attempting to monitor the border, Tusk warned that “all crossings on the German border are now classified as critical infrastructure.” 

The PM added that “any attempts at unauthorised action will be eliminated,” and that impersonating state services or interfering with official operations would be “punished severely.”

Poland has reintroduced internal Schengen border controls several times before, including during Euro 2012, UN climate summits, World Youth Day in 2016, the NATO summit the same year, and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2023, Warsaw reinstated controls along the Slovak border due to increased use of the Balkan migration route. Earlier in 2025, veterinary border checks and animal product import bans were reintroduced on borders with Slovakia, Germany and the Czech Republic to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.