In its weekly report published at noon on 19 September, Poland’s Interior Ministry said Border Guard units recorded only nine attempted illegal crossings from Belarus between 11 and 17 September—one of the lowest weekly tallies since August. Officers also detained two suspected people-smugglers and issued 27 refusals of entry at internal Schengen borders with Germany and Lithuania. The ministry credited the downward trend to the re-imposition of temporary controls on those two western and northern frontiers, first introduced in July 2025 to counter what Warsaw calls “state-orchestrated migration pressure” from Minsk. Since the controls were reinstated, nearly 56,000 travellers and 27,700 vehicles have been stopped for on-the-spot document checks. A draft regulation submitted last week would extend the regime until at least April 2027, drawing on the EU’s Schengen Borders Code provision for exceptional threats to public security. For multinational companies the figures are a double-edged sword. Fewer irregular entries reduce compliance risk when hiring third-country nationals, but prolonged spot checks increase transit times for cross-border staff and just-in-time freight moving between Polish and German plants. Logistics operators report average delays of 20-40 minutes for trucks at Świecko and Jędrzychowice, with occasional peaks of two hours during shift changes. HR teams should continue verifying that posted workers carry originals— not scans—of residence permits and A1 certificates, as officers routinely ask for them. Firms routing high-value goods through Poland may consider alternative corridors via the Czech Republic or the Baltic Sea ferries if parliamentary approval of the April 2027 extension appears likely.
Source: Polskie Radio – English Section
