German court rules against sending asylum seekers back to Poland at border

A Berlin court has ruled against the German government’s new policy of turning back asylum seekers at the border with Poland without assessing their claims. However, Germany’s interior minister insists that the practice will continue.

The case was brought by three Somali nationals who were sent back to Poland after arriving at the German border on 9 May and attempting to claim asylum. The German federal police justified this by stating that the migrants had entered Germany from a safe third country.

That decision was made based on a regulation issued by Germany’s interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, just two days earlier, immediately after he had been sworn in as part of the new government in Berlin. The measure permits immediate rejections and returns at the border without assessing asylum claims.

The government justified its new policy by citing article 72 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which allows member states to bypass EU rules in order to protect public order or internal security, notes German daily Tagesspiegel.

But, according to a ruling issued by the Berlin administrative court on Monday, the decision to return the migrants was unlawful because the government “cannot base rejections on the exception provided for in article 72 of the TFEU”.

The court found that, under the EU’s Dublin Regulation, Germany is obligated to complete the procedure for determining the responsible member state for asylum applications lodged on German territory before a return may take place, even if the asylum seekers did not have a right to enter Germany.

The ruling was issued in an emergency process used when a quick decision is needed to prevent serious harm. It is the first such ruling regarding the government’s new policy and cannot be appealed.

However, Dobrindt said on Monday that he regards the ruling as only applying to the specific case in question and that the government would continue with its new migration policies.

“We will continue with the pushbacks,” said Dobrindt, quoted by Deutsche Welle, using a term referring to sending migrants back over a border. “We think we have the legal justification for this.”

But a lawmaker from the opposition Greens, Irene Mihalic, said that the ruling was a “severe defeat for the federal government”. She added that “the border blockades were a rejection of the European Dublin system and have offended our European neighbours”.

Last year, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned a decision by the previous German government of Olaf Schulz to reinstate controls on all its borders in order to clamp down on illegal migration.

Earlier this year, Tusk warned that Poland would stop complying with EU regulations, including the Dublin Regulation, in order to prevent the large number of migrant returns being carried out by Germany.

In March, Poland itself introduced a ban on asylum claims by migrants crossing its eastern border with Belarus, whose government has encouraged and assisted tens of thousands of people – mainly from Asia and Africa – to enter the EU. After reaching Poland, many seek to travel onwards to Germany.

According to media reports cited by Tagesspiegel, in the first two weeks after the introduction of Germany’s new policy, 1,676 migrants were turned back at the country’s borders.

In April, official data obtained by Polish media showed that, in the space of 14 months between January 2024 and February 2025, Germany returned to Poland over 11,000 migrants who had unlawfully crossed the border.

That has prompted anger in Poland, leading to protests at border crossings and in the capital, Warsaw, against Germany’s actions. The national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party has accused Tusk’s government of failing to stand up to Berlin on the issue.

Main image credit: Combat Camera Poland/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)