Germany has requested the return of 1,878 asylum seekers to Poland since the beginning of the year, the Polish border police said on Monday.
In the same period, a total of 2,182 applications were received from other EU member states, the authority wrote on Twitter.
In the entire previous year, 3,929 applications were submitted to send asylum seekers back to Poland, the border police added.
A spokeswoman for the border guard told the Polish news agency PAP that 305 asylum seekers had so far been sent back from Germany this year under the so-called Dublin Agreement.
This EU regulation aims to establish which EU member state is responsible for processing an asylum seeker's application. It allows for countries to send asylum seekers back to the country in which they were initially processed, if that country is a Dublin signatory.
The Dublin system has been widely criticized by EU states and humanitarian organizations as being inefficient and jeopardizing refugees' rights.
According to the spokesperson, these are often people who have allegedly "abused" asylum procedures.
"They have applied for international protection and left Poland without waiting for a decision," she said.
When they then apply for asylum again in Germany, they are sent back to Poland.
In other cases, she added, the asylum application process was already under way, but the asylum seeker had left for Germany before the final decision.
