Lithuania’s new interior minister, Martynas Katelynas, has not ruled out introducing temporary controls on the border with Latvia. The aim is to combat secondary migration.
“There are no physical barriers in Latvia, and it is simply physically difficult for them to protect their border because, although it can be monitored, the response time is too long to intercept them. Migrants enter Latvian territory and disappear, and then our border guards have to detain these migrants with forged documents in Lithuania on the Riga-Warsaw bus route.
This is bad, and Latvia needs to make greater efforts. I think that solutions will be found in various formats, both in talks between the interior ministries and possibly at the level of prime ministers or presidents,” he said.
One such solution is temporary controls on the border with Latvia.
“If the situation does not change, all possible solutions should be considered. A mechanism similar to the one Poland applies to us could also be considered – border restrictions that result in kilometre-long queues of cars trying to cross the Lithuanian-Polish border on weekends.
Of course, this would be a ‘nuclear’ option, but if we had no other choice but to control the flows and detain migrants at the border rather than on our territory, I think it should be done. But I really would not want that,” he told BNS.
Poland currently carries out temporary controls on its border with Lithuania. Migrants attempting to travel further west are detained there every day. In most cases, they had previously crossed the border between Belarus and Latvia. According to Katelynas, while 40-50 people a month were detained in Lithuania at the beginning of the year, the number of detentions has now increased tenfold.
“In 2021, we had a crisis when migrants tried to cross our border with Belarus. Now Latvia is struggling and cannot ensure control, so we already have a similar problem on our internal European Union border between Lithuania and Latvia. I think we will solve this problem one way or another. This must become a priority because our border guards are also overburdened,” he said.
