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Poland will impose temporary controls on its borders with Germany and Lithuania from July 7, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.
The move comes amid growing tensions over illegal immigration within the European free travel zone.
Tusk warned on Monday that his country would reintroduce controls on the Polish-German border if it discovered that Germany was sending irregular migrants to Poland, Lithuanian media reported.
He also said that his country would take measures to prevent illegal border crossings from the Lithuanian side, as Poland had "put a lot of effort, money, sweat and, unfortunately, a little blood, into making the eastern border with Belarus airtight."
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz defended Germany's border controls on Tuesday. "We of course want to preserve this Schengen area, but freedom of movement in the Schengen area will only work in the long term if it is not abused by those who promote irregular migration, especially by migrant smuggling," he said.
The interior ministers of Germany and Poland had discussed the situation during a long phone call on Monday evening, Merz said in Berlin.
"We are also talking with the Polish government about joint checks in the relevant border areas," the chancellor said.
In response to Polish media reports, Merz said he wanted to clarify that Berlin had not turned back asylum seekers who had already arrived. “Some people here are claiming that there is, so to speak, regular repatriation tourism from Germany to Poland… This is not the case,” he said.
The Polish checks would by no means be an exception in the European free travel zone: As of July 1, 11 of the 29 countries in the Schengen area, including Austria, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, had notified the European Commission of plans to reintroduce border controls, according to executive data.
This list does not yet include Belgium, which last month announced it would introduce "entry controls" over the summer with the stated aim of stopping illegal migration.
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