Latvia Faces Belarus Border Surge

Latvia's border guard chief Guntis Pujāts says his country has become the main pressure point on the Belarus frontier, with 7,634 attempted entries recorded in 2026 and smuggling networks forceful enough to prompt warning shots (LRT). This is not a new crisis. It is the same method, moved to a different stretch of border. For Malta, a Schengen state with no land frontier but a deep interest in how the EU polices its external borders, the point is simple: European border defence is shared on paper, but still carried by national governments in practice.

A Crisis That Relocates

Lithuania's daily figures show how the pressure moves. On 7 July, Latvia turned back 68 people at its Belarus border. Lithuania turned back 14. Poland turned back 5 (LRT). Belarus does not need to push equally along the whole frontier. It tests one section, concentrates there, and waits for the state on the receiving end to absorb the cost while its neighbours adjust.

The EU identified the tactic in 2021, when the European Council, the forum where heads of government set the bloc's political direction, said Europe would not accept third countries using migrants as political instruments. The Council then widened sanctions against Belarus to cover what it described as a hybrid attack and the instrumentalisation of migrants (European Council, Council). Four years later, the sanctions remain, the pressure continues, and the practical burden still lands on whichever member state happens to hold that section of fence.

Latvia's Problem Becomes Poland's Argument

What enters Latvia does not stay at the Latvian border. Polish authorities have detained people who crossed into Latvia, moved through Lithuania, and were then found in trucks heading west. Since January, Poland has recorded roughly 760 detentions at its Lithuanian border alone (PAP).

Warsaw is using those movements to defend internal checks inside Schengen, the passport-free travel area Malta also belongs to. Poland says controls on its German and Lithuanian borders have produced 3.84 million inspections, 1,900 entry refusals and nearly 1,200 readmission transfers (RMF24). Each figure strengthens the case for extending checks that were meant to be temporary. Each extension chips away at the free movement Schengen was built to protect.

The pressure is already drawing in countries beyond the immediate frontier. Estonia, which does not border Belarus, has sent a second rotation of officers to support Latvian patrols (PPA). Finland has dispatched border guards to Latvia while keeping its own Russian border closed under national emergency legislation (Yle). The response is European in language, but national in execution. That is the weakness Belarus is exploiting.

Who Checks the Emergency

The EU's new asylum and migration rules, in force after 2024, allow governments to use faster and tougher border procedures during emergencies, including cases where a foreign state deliberately pushes people towards the frontier (Crisis Regulation). But the new rules do not suspend the right to ask for asylum. Screening, vulnerability checks and procedural safeguards remain legal obligations.

UNHCR's review of Latvia's draft asylum law points to the gaps: rights monitoring, legal counselling, identifying vulnerable people, and limits on detention (UNHCR). Across Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the same pattern is visible. Governments point to the emergency as evidence that hard enforcement is working. The safeguards meant to prevent abuse remain much thinner.

The European Commission proposed emergency measures for Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in 2021 (Commission). It now needs to account publicly for whether the new pact's safeguards are being applied, or quietly bypassed, along the border sections under the heaviest pressure. Belarus has found a cheap lever that forces Europe to confront a contradiction it has never settled: the external border is called common, but it is defended nationally, and the legal scrutiny tends to arrive afterwards.