EU nearing 500 'temporary' border closures, as Poland imposes new controls

The latest introduction by Poland on Monday (7 July) of border checks with neighbouring Germany and Lithuania adds to the long list of similar Schengen closures over the years, totalling 472 notifications since 2006.

Up until 2015, member states had only issued 35 such notifications to the European Commission, now posing questions on the survival of a border-free zone that spans 29 countries and some 400 million people.

From late 2015 onwards, the primary reason for such closures were linked to irregular migration, followed by covid lockdowns during the pandemic, and Russia security threats.

But the decision by Poland's prime minister Donald Tusk to impose border checks on Monday (7 July) also risks kicking off a possible tit-for-tat amid reports Germany is sending irregular migrants back into Poland.

Germany has denied turning back asylum seekers to Poland along their shared 467km border.

But Poland appears unconvinced.

"The border guard, with the support of the police and the army, is fully prepared to undertake controls on the Polish-German and Polish-Lithuanian borders," Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland's interior minister was reported as saying in Polish media.

Poland's latest 30-day notification, sent last Friday, covers 65 control points: 52 at the Polish-German border and 13 at the Polish-Lithuanian border.

Far-right 'citizen patrols'

And Polish far-right groups have since formed so-called 'citizen patrols' on the country's western border, reporters Reuters news agency.

As migration continues to dominate the public and political discourse, often ahead of elections, the issue of free movement under Schengen remains strained.

But Poland's neighbour Germany has been celebrating a dramatic decline in the number of asylum seekers, dropping by around 50 percent compared to last year.

In June 2025, fewer than 7,000 new asylum applications were submitted, a 59-percent decrease compared to June 2024 — and the lowest level in over a decade.

The drop comes on the back of political promises by Germany's chancellor Friedrich Merz to roll back migrant arrivals.

"We have initiated the migration turnaround: with more restrictions, more rejections, more control, more returns — in line with European law," said Merz on X on Sunday.

Germany also late last year imposed border control checks with Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland.

Those checks will remain in place until at least September, after being extended earlier this year over migration fears.

For its part, the commission has only ever once issued an opinion on such temporary closures, which aims to gauge whether they are both proportionate and necessary.

"Reintroducing temporary internal border controls is possible subject to certain conditions, as set out in EU legislation, and in particular in the Schengen borders code," said a spokesperson for the commission.

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