Financial Aid for Poland or Border Controls?

More and more refugees are coming via Belarus - presumably smuggled by the regime there. While Interior Minister Seehofer is therefore considering controls at the german-Polish border, Saxony's Prime Minister Kretschmer is counting on financial aid for Poland.

Saxony is - along with Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania - one of the federal states that are directly affected by migration via the Belarus route. Many of the migrants allegedly deliberately brought to the border with Poland by the Belarusian regime are trying to get from there to Germany - and Saxony has more than 100 kilometers in common with Poland.Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer is therefore calling for stronger support for Poland in securing the EU's external border. Although - if only because of the local knowledge - only Poland itself can get involved on the border with Belarus, Kretschmer said in the ARD program "Report from Berlin". When asked about the financial support for this task, however, the CDU politician said: "Of course we have to help financially." HOWEVER, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had spoken out against the financing of barbed wire fences and the construction of walls.

More and more refugees are coming via Belarus - presumably smuggled by the regime there. While Interior Minister Seehofer is therefore considering controls at the german-Polish border, Saxony's Prime Minister Kretschmer is counting on financial aid for Poland.

"State-Organized Human Trafficking"

Kretschmer rejected controls at the border between Germany and Poland. The situation is not comparable to that of 2015 - and the causes are known, Kretschmer said: It is "state-organized human trafficking" by Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, who is trying to put the EU under pressure. In addition to the support of the states on the eastern EU external border, one must take action "with all strength and all possibilities" against the airlines that participated in this smuggling trade, Kretschmer continued in the ARD broadcast.