Poland’s Smart Reaction To ‘Passport Ban” By Minsk

Warsaw has stopped placing border crossing stamps on Belarusian passports.

This simple decision is, in fact, important for those who live in Poland and cannot change their passport after Lukashenka’s new decree, but at the same time travel to countries outside the Schengen zone.

“This is a Belarusian. We don’t put it in Belarusian passports, right?” a Nasha Niva reader reports a conversation between two Polish border guards in a passport control glass cabin.

“Take your passport,” the officer hands over a passport without a stamp.

After Lukashenka’s decree prohibiting Belarusians from changing their passports at the embassies of their own country, it is worth saving extra space in your passport.

Tens of thousands of Belarusians have found refuge in Europe to escape the repression, and the price for a trip from Schengen to Romania, Britain, Georgia, Kazakhstan or almost any other country is 4 stamps. This is almost half a page of the passport.

Some say that it was possible to negotiate with Polish border controls earlier. However, the human approach has been replaced by a systemic one.

Neither in Lithuania, nor in Latvia, nor in Georgia - countries where many Belarusians have also found refuge - is it impossible to come to an agreement with the border guards. Almost all countries have electronic databases, and you can find out the date of entry into the country not only by the stamps in passports.

“This decision was approved by the Border Guard, the Ministries of Internal Affairs and Foreign Affairs,” a Polish diplomat told Nasha Niva. “This is a logical decision, because there is still no clear understanding of what to do for the many thousands of Belarusians who live in Poland and will not be able to exchange their documents. Perhaps a decision will be made to the extent of simplifying the procedure for obtaining Polish passports, but now we are doing our best. Eliminating stamps may at least slow down the expiration of passports for reasons other than duration.”

Other countries where thousands of Belarusians have settled will face the same challenge as the Poles.