Overview

• Polish authorities have set up spot inspections at 65 crossing points—52 on the German frontier and 13 on the Lithuanian border—with 800 police officers, 200 gendarmerie soldiers and 500 territorial army troops.
• The government cited serious security concerns and alleged hybrid-warfare tactics by Belarus and Russia to invoke Schengen provisions permitting temporary internal controls.
• Within hours of the measures taking effect, border guards arrested an Estonian driver suspected of smuggling four Afghan migrants across the Polish-Lithuanian boundary.
• Prime Minister Donald Tusk defended the reinstated checks as essential to reduce uncontrolled flows after far-right vigilante patrols and under pressure following the election of nationalist President Karol Nawrocki.
• Germany’s commissioner for Poland, Knut Abraham, warned that reciprocal controls risk turning the border into a ‘ping-pong’ zone and urged the two countries to establish joint procedures rather than pushbacks.