POLAND’S leader is set to present plans today to suspend the right to asylum.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced plans at the weekend to temporarily suspend the right to asylum as part of a new migration policy, citing its alleged abuse by eastern neighbour Belarus and Russia.

Mr Tusk said that “the state must regain 100 per cent of the control over who enters and leaves Poland,” and that a territorial suspension of the right to asylum will be part of a strategy that will be presented to a Cabinet meeting today, Polish news agency PAP reported.

The Prime Minister didn’t give details, but said at a convention of his Civic Coalition that “we will reduce illegal migration in Poland to a minimum.”

Mr Tusk’s coalition has continued the policy of “pushbacks” of migrants carried out by the previous government and reintroduced an exclusion zone on part of the border.

But rights groups have slammed the new policy. 

Malgorzata Szuleka, a board member of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, described the policy to the BBC as “a new low” for Mr Tusk.

She said: “There is a humanitarian crisis on the border, but it is also an open migration route. We need to find a place for rational discussion that is not so populistically driven.”