Page 44 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine October 2024

44 I Central Europe bne October 2024
Fiala also maintains a pro-Ukrainian stance and backs the arrest warrant issued by ICC against Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin officials.
News of Cernochova’s invitation of Gallant to Czechia came as the United Nations condemned Israel’s “blatant disregard” for international law in the Palestinian territories.
In the latest development, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan called in Pre-Trial Chamber I of the court to issue arrest warrants against Gallant and Netanyahu as well as against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif. Netanyahu described the effort as
a “moral disgrace of the first order,” Times of Israel wrote on September 10.
Over 1,000 Israelis, mostly civilians, were massacred by Hamas in October last year before IDF launched an air and ground offensive in the Hamas- controlled Gaza Strip which has so
far claimed the lives of over 40,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, according to figures released by the Hamas-run health authorities.
Poland says Germany’s border controls
“unacceptable”
Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw
The decision by the German government to introduce tighter border controls as measure to curb migration is “unacceptable,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on September 10.
The apparently temporarily tightened border control regime kicks in on September 16, including along the nearly 500-km long Polish-German border. The border is an internal EU border covered by the free movement regulations, commonly known as the Schengen rules.
Poland watches over hundreds of kilometres of the EU’s external borders with war-torn Ukraine and hostile Belarus and Russia. Those borders should be Germany’s focus, Tusk said.
“What Poland needs is not a strengthening of controls on our border [with Germany], but a strengthening
of the participation of states, including Germany, in guarding and securing the external borders of the EU,” Tusk told a press briefing in Warsaw.
“It is the internal, political situation in Germany that is causing these steps to be taken and not our policy towards illegal migration at our borders,” Tusk also said.
The PM thus referred to the political situation in Germany after an attack - claimed by a Syrian asylum-seeker
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on a festival in the town of Solingen that left three dead.
The anti-immigration rhetoric helped the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to win the regional vote
in Thuringia and come runners-up in Saxony at the beginning of September.
While all of Germany’s borders are internal borders of the EU falling under Schengen rules, the same rules make it possible to tighten controls temporarily to boost security.
Tusk also said Poland will seek consultations with Germany's neighbours on whether Berlin's decision should elicit a reaction from the EU.
Poland itself had instituted temporary controls along its border with Slovakia, citing the need to combat illegal migration along the so-called Balkan
route, where migrants try to enter the EU from the non-EU countries such as Serbia through member states Hungary and Slovakia.
In what might be a sign of cooling Polish- German relations, Tusk also cancelled his trip to Germany, where he was due to receive an award for his pro-democratic and media freedom stance.
The spat over border controls also comes in the wake of Germany’s pointing to Poland as a key actor in sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022.
Poland has recently told Germany to “apologise and keep quiet” about Nord Stream, which Poland says was the central element of Russian influence in Germany and the EU, and refused
to hand over a Ukrainian suspected of direct involvement in the attack on the pipeline.
Donald Tusk (left) with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz earlier this year. / bne IntelliNews