Germany will open a new migrant center by the Polish border for asylum seekers to be returned to Poland under EU rules.
The new center, in the town of Eisenhüttenstadt, is expected to become operational on March 1, Polish Radio reported.
The facility is dubbed a ‘Dublin center’ after the EU regulation that specifies a migrant can be returned to the country in which they first filed an asylum claim.
The facility was set up under an agreement between Germany’s federal government and the authorities of the eastern state of Brandenburg, which borders Poland, signed on Monday, the Bild newspaper reported.
“The center will accommodate 150 to 250 people in two buildings,” Brandenburg’s interior minister, Katrin Lange, was quoted by Bild as saying. “Then we will have all Dublin refugees in a single central location. Due to the proximity to the Polish border, they can be returned there quickly.”
Bild cited an anonymous judge saying that although Poland accepts most returnees, many then make their way back to Germany. To prevent this, the federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, wants ‘Dublin’ cases to have their benefits restricted.
Rather than the welfare payments usually made to asylum seekers, such migrants will receive only “bed, bread and soap” under new rules, Faeser said. She also called for speedy removal of migrants under the Dublin regulation.
“If people come to Germany even though they should be processed for asylum in another EU country, they need to be sent back faster,” Polish Radio quoted her as saying.
Poland’s main opposition party, Law and Justice, has accused the Donald Tusk government of acquiescing to the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum by accepting returnees.
Tusk has repeatedly stated that Warsaw will not abide by the rules, which provide for compulsory migrant relocations and financial penalties for refusal to accept them.
