The National Revenue Administration (KAS) and Border Guard on 30 September issued an evening notice confirming that two minor road crossings on the Belarusian frontier — Połowce in Podlaskie province and Sławatycze in Lubelskie — are ‘temporarily closed until further notice’. The decision follows intelligence reports of increased smuggling attempts and continued state-sponsored ‘instrumentalised migration’ from the Belarusian side. Although the closures affect mainly local passenger cars and buses, the knock-on effect has been visible at the Koroszczyn/Kukuryki freight corridor 120 km to the north, where live queue data showed wait times for trucks entering Poland exceeding 70 hours on Wednesday afternoon. Shippers moving automotive components and fast-turn foodstuffs via the Terespol rail/road terminal are already reporting schedule slippage, forcing some logistics managers to reroute through Lithuania’s Šalčininkai crossing or Romania’s Siret corridor. The latest suspension adds to restrictions first introduced in 2023 when Poland shut the Bobrowniki crossing and later limited formal asylum intake from Belarus. Warsaw is now lobbying Brussels to allow member states to pause asylum processing during ‘hybrid-attack episodes’, a proposal that will be debated by justice and home-affairs ministers next month. For employers running intra-company transfers through Belarus, mobility advisers recommend switching to Schengen-internal routings via Latvia or direct flights to Warsaw until the security picture improves. Transport companies should build longer transit times into contracts and verify that CMR insurance remains valid when vehicles are redirected through third countries. The closures come as Poland finalises full rollout of the EU Entry/Exit System at its external borders. Once operational, the biometric system is expected to speed truck and bus processing, but officials caution that physical security incidents will still justify ad-hoc shutdowns such as Połowce and Sławatycze.
Source: Granica.gov.pl notice
