Germany wants to send almost 3,400 migrants back to Poland

The Polish Border Guard (SG) has reported that the German authorities want to return 3,400 foreigners, residing illegally in Germany, to Poland because they first entered the EU across the Polish border.

Under the EU's Dublin Regulations, countries can return irregular migrants to the member state they first entered.

Anna Michalska, the spokeswoman for the Border Guard, told PAP that the largest numbers of people that could be sent from Germany to Poland were citizens of Georgia (89 people), citizens of Russia, mainly of Chechen nationality (86 people) and citizens of Iraq (51 people).

According to SG data, from the beginning of the year to the end of July, some 3,950 were earmarked for transferal to Poland from across the EU, with Germany accounting for 3,377 of them.

So far this year, as many as 804 people have already been returned to Poland from all EU states.

Michalska said that some of the people in Germany might be foreigners who illegally crossed the Belarusian border into Poland, but also some who crossed into Lithuania or Latvia and got to Germany via Poland.

In this case, they could be sent back to Poland within 48 hours under a simplified readmission programme, if they were detained at the Polish border or, for example, had a ticket confirming their arrival from Poland.